Well for all you creative haters ---- creative not doing so well it seems

[JohnS]

Articles goes on to say its mainly due to falling prices on MP3 music
players and how they won a lame sounding patent claim. They describe
it as the "zen patent" the way 3 nestled menus organize stored files
on Mp3 players. Apparently APPLE uses the same layout as do some
others. I think these type of patents are really lame.

I remember Gemstar and their grid layout patent for channels/shows on
screen -- really obvious sounding stuff.

--------------

Creative Technology reports loss

Creative has been struggling to keep up with market leader Apple
Digital music player maker Creative Technology has plunged into the
red, as it continues to struggle behind market leader Apple.
Singapore-based Creative reported on Wednesday that it made a net loss
of $114m (£62m) for its third quarter to the end of March.

 

[kony]

Articles goes on to say its mainly due to falling prices on MP3 music
players and how they won a lame sounding patent claim. They describe
it as the "zen patent" the way 3 nestled menus organize stored files
on Mp3 players. Apparently APPLE uses the same layout as do some
others. I think these type of patents are really lame.

I remember Gemstar and their grid layout patent for channels/shows on
screen -- really obvious sounding stuff.

--------------

Creative Technology reports loss

Creative has been struggling to keep up with market leader Apple
Digital music player maker Creative Technology has plunged into the
red, as it continues to struggle behind market leader Apple.
Singapore-based Creative reported on Wednesday that it made a net loss
of $114m (£62m) for its third quarter to the end of March.

If only considering MP3 players, wasn't this expected?... or
was this loss across all of Creative?

I'd expect Apple to lose market share in the future too,
because once the more wealthy and technically savvy customer
base has their players, they either don't need another one
so *badly*, or if they do because their current player has
died, they'll be less likely to buy same brand again.

The market has a ton of other MP3 players now at lower cost,
perfectly capable of playing MP3 and with some desirable
features quite timely, like being able to use the higher
density SD cards instead of being 2X the size and using a
mechanical drive or embedded memory that doesn't seem to be
reducing the size of the players all that much.

Then there's the added features they hope will catch on. I
can't see myself wanting to watch video on a 1.x" screen,
nor to carry around a large enough screen to make it
enjoyable. Then there's the hybrid devices, soon enough MP3
on cell phone may be so common nobody really wants to lug
around the MP3 player too.

 

[Synapse Syndrome]

If only considering MP3 players, wasn't this expected?... or
was this loss across all of Creative?

They must have lost a massive part of their custom due to motherboards
having pretty good built-in sound these days. The X-Fi sounds excellent,
but it is expensive and only gaming and music enthusiasts will ever pay for
something like that when onboard sound is good enough for most people,
especially with standard desktop speaker systems.

ss.

 

[kony]

They must have lost a massive part of their custom due to motherboards
having pretty good built-in sound these days.

I couldn't disagree more. Motherboard sound is as horrible
as ever, even significantly worse than typical in the
Celeron 300 era. It doesn't even filter out system noise,
resamples the common audio CD, and adds expense plus taking
away valuable rear port space while most users opting for
mere onboard sound are more likely to only have a basic
speaker system driven by it.

The X-Fi sounds excellent,

No, it's ok but not even close to good. It hs bells and
whistles though, but a corresponding price too. Didn't you
know all CL's good cards are sold under their other brand?
The CL name is to milk the public except for gaming
support... but for gaming, it is a reasonably good choice.

but it is expensive and only gaming and music enthusiasts will ever pay for
something like that when onboard sound is good enough for most people,
especially with standard desktop speaker systems.

Music enthusiasts would be wise to do the research, or
better still, ask audiophiles that know the underlying
technology. Quality sound is not about digital tricks but
rather, preservation and reproduction of signal.

 

[Synapse Syndrome]

I couldn't disagree more. Motherboard sound is as horrible
as ever, even significantly worse than typical in the
Celeron 300 era. It doesn't even filter out system noise,
resamples the common audio CD, and adds expense plus taking
away valuable rear port space while most users opting for
mere onboard sound are more likely to only have a basic
speaker system driven by it.

The motherboards that I have seen (or rather heard) with Realtek or Audigy
onboard sound okay, and if these things are on most motherboards these days
are you seriously saying that soundcard sales haven't been effected by this?

No, it's ok but not even close to good. It hs bells and
whistles though, but a corresponding price too. Didn't you
know all CL's good cards are sold under their other brand?
The CL name is to milk the public except for gaming
support... but for gaming, it is a reasonably good choice.

I have an X-Fi Xtrememusic that came with my brother's Dell for not much
extra. I am very impressed with the sound it gives connected to my Marantz
KI Signature amp and Mourdant-Short floorstanding speakers. There is a
definite improvement when playing CDs over my old Live! card. I am even
considering selling my Marantz KI Signature CD player on eBay for space and
convenience.

Music enthusiasts would be wise to do the research, or
better still, ask audiophiles that know the underlying
technology. Quality sound is not about digital tricks but
rather, preservation and reproduction of signal.

I don't use the upsampling Crystalliser thing or anything. I use this card
for mp3s but the sound is clear and good enough to consider selling my CD
player. I used to give hi-fi sound more importance when I bought CDs and
separates in the 90's when I smoked a lot of weed, but now with compromised
mp3s and my desire for convenience this will do until I can afford another
hi-fi system one day.

ss.

 

[kony]

The motherboards that I have seen (or rather heard) with Realtek or Audigy
onboard sound okay, and if these things are on most motherboards these days
are you seriously saying that soundcard sales haven't been effected by this?

No I'm not suggesting that at all, rather that the mere
presence of the onboard audio is why sound card sales
dropped, but that does not speak for it's quality.

I have an X-Fi Xtrememusic that came with my brother's Dell for not much
extra. I am very impressed with the sound it gives connected to my Marantz
KI Signature amp and Mourdant-Short floorstanding speakers. There is a
definite improvement when playing CDs over my old Live! card. I am even
considering selling my Marantz KI Signature CD player on eBay for space and
convenience.

I never claimed it wasn't better than some other poor CL
card, that much it may easily be... technically it is an
impressive card but there is no digital trickery that
improves the sound. So what we have are two camps- those
who judge sound by accuracy and those that just listen to
output versus some thing else and claim "I like the way it's
sounding" [distorting it]. Not all distortions are
perceived as degradations to quality to all listeners, it
isn't an entirely invalid argument to prefer it... consider
the tube amps many people love and are still built today by
audiophiles. Even so, it is very much a subjective thing to
prefer this and goes against the perceptions and marketing
claims.

I don't use the upsampling Crystalliser thing or anything. I use this card
for mp3s but the sound is clear and good enough to consider selling my CD
player.

You may misunderstand what I mean. Consider where is the
sampling rate for the INPUT of the audio stream? It has to
match the (file) sampling rate else be resampled immediately
just for the card to digitize it at all. The sound is
degraded BEFORE (and regardless of) enabling or disabling
any other card features.

I used to give hi-fi sound more importance when I bought CDs and
separates in the 90's when I smoked a lot of weed, but now with compromised
mp3s and my desire for convenience this will do until I can afford another
hi-fi system one day.

I would've thought smoking weed made best quality _less_
important... but you do have a point that if a lot of the
tracks are LQ online MP3 versions, a better sound system can
even reveal more of their flaws and make them sound worse
(or at least, make the flaws from the overcompression, more
distracting).

 

[john smith]

If only considering MP3 players, wasn't this expected?... or
was this loss across all of Creative?

I'd expect Apple to lose market share in the future too,
because once the more wealthy and technically savvy customer
base has their players, they either don't need another one
so *badly*, or if they do because their current player has
died, they'll be less likely to buy same brand again.

Yeah I think itll finally start affecting APPLE in the next few years
but theyve amazingly pulled off a miracle. Youve got to give Jobs
credit. My initial reaction was --- Id never pay any kind of high
prices for a MP3 player cause every other gadget has tons of cheapo
alternatives so you know MP3 players were going to suffer the same
fate.

Jobs had two thing going for him though for a while there werent
ridiculously low cheapos like there are now starting from the end of
last year where $20-30 buck super cheapo players came out. Now there
is serious price erosion.

Also Jobs and Apple did a fantastic job on Itunes, getting licensing
besides getting the player right and then tied the whole thing
together so you had to buy the Ipod. I was shocked. The whole video
downloading thing is really taking off. Others tried to do the same
thing with music and video --- the head of Netflix tried to do it with
movies and TIVO Ive read two years ago but couldnt get the licensing
from studios. Now almost every month I read about CBS, Yahoo and
Google all getting into video downloads. I went to SHOWTIMEs website
and was surprised to see they have WEEDS and HUFF and other cable
series epis for download via ITUNES and I think HBO had some too, I
might have that wrong.

So far there was talk about IPOD sales slowdowns a year or so ago but
that forgotten again and all I see is continuing hype about APPLES
great earnings numbers from IPOD.

Those super el cheapos are affecting some people I actually got one
and I dont buy anything unless the prices are CHEAP. I bought one for
$25. The numbers are falling on even decent players so that Im
actually thinking of getting something better pretty soon.

 

[john smith]

I couldn't disagree more. Motherboard sound is as horrible
as ever, even significantly worse than typical in the
Celeron 300 era. It doesn't even filter out system noise,
resamples the common audio CD, and adds expense plus taking
away valuable rear port space while most users opting for
mere onboard sound are more likely to only have a basic
speaker system driven by it.

I actually saw a test on one finally. Ive always wondered how bad they
were . Frankly for everyday use they dont sound that bad if you just
go by casual impressions. Ive used onboard sound intermittently for
long periods of time. HOwever a test I saw was pretty bad. This guy
did measurements on one ---- I cant remember the make and it came out
surprisingly poor in the numbers. I mean fairly bad in noise
measurements and all that so it backs up the fact that for serious
sound ---- its bad unless this wasnt typical for onboard sound.

No, it's ok but not even close to good. It hs bells and
whistles though, but a corresponding price too. Didn't you
know all CL's good cards are sold under their other brand?
The CL name is to milk the public except for gaming
support... but for gaming, it is a reasonably good choice.

Music enthusiasts would be wise to do the research, or
better still, ask audiophiles that know the underlying
technology. Quality sound is not about digital tricks but
rather, preservation and reproduction of signal.

I havent heard the XFi but I think you guys may be a bit too hard on
the Xfi though I cant be sure. Creative has really turned around (I
think).

In fact like Ive posted I thought they were doing much better now then
before cause a few years ago they WERE crappy across the board. They
had ZERO serious sound cards and were totally living on their hyped
rep. All the serious people talked about how sound was resampled and
they didnt get decent sound for real music despite some good reviews
at some hardware sites. And onboard sound --- SoundStorm at the time
was said to rival creatives game cards.

Now theyve been on a roll with consumers willing to pay high bucks for
XFi and even the later Audigys. I actually think for GAMES the Audigy
2 I just got sounds pretty good much better than onboard sound and you
can pick one up recently at drastic discounts as low as $25-30. I
wouldnt pay 60-70 as some are for old Audigy cards.

Probably though I cant be sure --- they might actually have REALLY
improved even the Xfis sound.

I swear --- people are so used to people crying WOLF when it comes to
creative that no one believes good stuff about them but that new line
of E-MU cards is getting rave reviews though some bash it for some
driver reasons in early reviews. Apparently the E-MU line they bought
up and the new line up of cards is excellent. Some of that may
actually have found its way into the XFI.

I totally agree though if you are going to use it for music -
transferring and recording get a music recording card not a game card.

Heres the entry level 0404 by Creative E-Mu now this thing is selling
as low as $70-80 !
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep04/articles/emu0404.htm

Heres an excerpt of a review at SOS back in 2004

Cream Of The Crop

At this price and with this spec I suspect most other soundcard manufacturers will have shed a few tears behind the scenes when Emu released the 0404.
I can't think of a single alternative at a similar price that provides remotely similar functions and performance. In fact, I suspect the 0404 may tempt some
potential purchasers away from Emu's own 1212M model, which is more than double the price, since the 0404 provides exactly the same DSP effects and
versatile Patchmix DSP mixer. So what compromises would there be?

Well, you lose the balanced analogue inputs and outputs (which, as many musicians are finding, can help solve a lot of ground loop problems when connecting
to other mains-powered gear), the Firewire port, ADAT functions and 192kHz sample-rate support. Also, while you do still have the Sync board as an option,
for the time being at least the excellent Emulator X soft sampler isn't compatible with the 0404, and without GSIF driver support you can't use Gigastudio either
, leaving Halion, Mach V or Kontakt as the only real soft-sampling options. However, as long as you're happy with unbalanced analogue I/O and don't need more
than two analogue ins and outs, there simply isn't anything available to my knowledge that provides such professional-sounding audio at this price. Emu have done it again!

Heres the review on the higher end cards.
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun04/articles/emu.htm

They have the 0404 which has super mearurement numbers and getting
great reviews except for a few bashers in regards to lack of support
for a few sampling programs etc and some bugginess with the early
drivers.

Heres a good review --note he calls the card excellent but talks about
some problems with the add on Proteus bundle software.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0006YY0C4/002-9309189-8961612?v=glance

I bought the 2496 Maudio but got rid of it recently cause I want the
1212M E-mu.

Emu has the 0404 which seems like THE bargain now in music recording
cards, 1212M and 1820 which has a breakout box etc. They have these M
version (1212M 1820M) which supposedly has better signal to noise
ratios than even their regular cards. I dont see any non Ms selling
much anymore anyway for the higher end cards. There is no 0404M though
but the numbers are great anyway.

Ive noticed the orig wave of great cheap recording cards has fallen in
price from 200 and a few years ago down to 150 and now they are
selling for 100-130 m like the 2496 etc and echo mia.

Now Maudio which was taken over by Digidesign has come out with the
Maudio 192 which sells in the old price range of 200 bucks for the
entry level cards. Now the entry level for the older cards is 100
bucks ! And you can get the NEWer model EMu 0404 for 70-100 bucks.

Theres also the interesting ESI Juli which doesnt seem as popular in
the US.