Talk:Creative Technology

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Contents

[edit] Criticism Section Sources

Ive added a reliable source to the criticism section. If you still take issue deltabeignet than attempt to explain your reasoning here. Otherwise, your opinion is unfounded and I'll make sure you stop reverting legitimate additions to this article. INO Exodus (talk) 14:00, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

  • I'm fine with the current state of the section. My objection was based on the source; blogs and Internet forums have not traditionally been considered reliable sources. But the times they are a-changin', and I could be wrong. On another note, please don't mark edit disputes as minor edits like this or this. For my part, I reacted rashly the first time you did so, and rolled you back, which I should not have done. Deltabeignet (talk) 23:48, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism & POV

I don't like the statement about Creative cards being considered "high-end" for two reasons: this perception is fading through a lack of innovation on Creative's part coupled with strong advances in on-board sound hardware capabilities. Second, the quality of Creative's sound card products has become a matter of much debate among computer enthusiasts over the past several years due to Creative's emphasis on marketing over innovation and customer support. --HunterZ 05:56, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks to Flakeloaf for an update that addresses this to some degree. --HunterZ 17:34, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
I've written up a blurb about the squeal of death and their acquisitions, but it still sounds a bit POV to me. Then again, it's hard to describe what happened without making them sound like some kind of Borg Corporation. Flakeloaf 18:43, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
Looks pretty good to me, but I'm in the anti-Creative camp and am thus biased. You might want to put some qualifiers in the statements in the cricism section to point out that some of the claimed effects of Creative's business practices are opinions and not substantiated facts. --HunterZ 18:13, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
So far as I'm aware, the statements written there are true. Creative was mired in ISA territory before purchasing Ensoniq, their Adlib clone dominated the market and crushed all of their competition at the time, and Aureal vs. Creative vs. Aureal really did turn out that way. Unfortunately these events happened several years ago, and reliable sources (blogs and editorials offering history lessons are not reliable sources) are difficult to find. Flakeloaf 18:58, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Should the John Carmack/Doom 3/Carmack's Reverse be mentioned as part of the criticism section?

I wouldn't think so. Their acquisition of hardware-based IP appears to be an attempt to monopolise the market, which is something one cannot do by acquiring a few video game licenses. Flakeloaf 11:08, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I think it should be mentioned. It caused quite a stir around the time Doom 3 came out and led to quite a few discussions about the morality of video game patents. --Polkapunk 17:10, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
  • I also think it should be mentioned. If it makes Creative look bad, it's because they patented a theoretical idea - and a method of doing things, as opposed to patenting an algorithm or the make of a piece of hardware. They didn't even write the code that Carmack used independently. As an amateur video game developer, I wouldn't want to spend countless hours developing technologies and ideas to find out that I can't use them, simply because someone has patented a theory that I also concocted of my own volition. Emhilradim 18:38 PDT, 2006.09.20.

[edit] Other Topics

Some other topics that might be worth discussing:

  • I'd be interested to see a list of companies bought out by Creative. I know E-mu Systems, Aureal, and Ensoniq are notable entries in this list. Update: I see that Ensoniq and Aureal acquisitions are now mentioned (thanks).
Another was Sensaura.
Should this be mentioned in the article? I wasn't aware of it but did find some news reports that confirm it. --HunterZ 01:43, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, the Sensaura business and IP portfolio was purchased from UK company Scipher plc on 3rd December 2003. All Sensaura employees (around 18 in number) transferred to Creative. Four months later, the Sensaura team moved offices to Egham, Surrey (UK) to share a building with another Creative owned company: 3Dlabs. Sensaura was integrated into Creative as an R&D division, reporting in to Creative Labs, Inc. and working closely with CTL in Singapore and CLI in the USA. In April 2007, Creative closed down the Sensaura operation (although five employees were retained and allocated to new work).

  • It might be worth mentioning that on-board sound has probably affected Creative's PC sound card business, but I'm not aware of any statistics that might back this up. It does seem that people are using on-board nVidia, Intel, Realtek, Sigmatel and VIA sound solutions instead of buying Creative (or other brand) sound cards though. --HunterZ 18:13, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
The nVidia SoundStorm has Dolby Digital Live encoding and the latest Creative X-Fi does not. One is part of the nForce 2 motherboard chipset, the other costs over $400. This might be why.
That's certainly true in my case. I should mention, however, that nVidia stopped making the SoundStorm after the nForce2 and that not even all nForce2 motherboards have it (I have an nVidia board with a Realtek codec, for example). There are PCI sound cards with DDL now, but they aren't widespread yet. --HunterZ 17:05, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
NVidia stopped making SoundStorm because somebody noticed the technology was superiour to their own, bought it and shelved it. Three guesses on who that was.Flakeloaf 20:08, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
That's an interesting theory that I hadn't heard before. Do you have any links to back it up? I think the idea gives Creative too much credit, though (but who knows?). --HunterZ 02:17, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
The hardware from Soundstorm chips was driven almost entirely with software written by Sensaura, Creative's last significant rival. When Creative bought Sensaura's IP, they acquired the technology upon which Soundstorm was based, and I'm not aware of that technology being implemented in the X-Fi in any meaningful way. It is rumoured to be making a comeback on the next-gen NForce boards, but I can't find any way to substantiate this. Flakeloaf 17:26, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
What I heard was that nVidia planned to address public outcry over the demise of the Soundstorm in some other unspecified way. It's rumored that they may have been thinking of releasing a standalone DDL sound card. --HunterZ 01:43, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Eh? Link to source?

  • In late October of 2005, Creative gave up their digital portable music product line. They claim they can not compete with iPod.
    • Where's the reference for this? It seems like a pretty big issue, and without a link? Last Avenue 22:53, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

It's strange. I saw this at http://sg.biz.yahoo.com/051107/15/3w96a.html (Yahoo! News), but the link is dead and I can't find this info anywhere else. I wonder if this was a rumour or false news, so they removed it. I'm going to remove the statement from the article. --Alberto msr 23:07, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Outdated bit

The article mentions something that was going to be replaced in 2005; someone more familiar may want to make sure this actually happened. Deltabeignet 07:46, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Article as a whole

This entire article seems to be about bashing Creative. The X-Fi is a fantastic card, the stock hitting an all time low is not true, the squel of death is something that me and my friends have never heard of or seen, so it can hardly be a common term. I'd suggest check facts and leave the bias out of the article, or find something else to talk about.

You and your friends weren't working in hardware support in the P3 era. I alone dealt with no fewer than fourty customers in the small mom & pop PC store where I worked. Google for "audigy + squeal" and see what you get. It was a very significant issue.
Their current card is quite good, and I agree with your current edit on that subject.
About the stock prices, July 2005 saw Creative's shares dip to a bit over $6 apiece (Proof: http://quotes.nasdaq.com/quote.dll?page=charting&mode=basics&selected=CREAF&symbol=CREAF), and as of January 2005 they're back up to around $8, which is still lower than the $18 where they were this time last year. I suggest you check your own facts before accusing other people of lying simply because they post information with which you do not agree.
I have removed POV statements from both sides in an attempt to make the article sound more neutral. The truth is Creative is not doing as well financially as they were a few years ago. Their products did not always succeed based on technological superiority, and this is not a blameworthy phenomenon, nor is it something unique to Creative. I've also removed superfluous mentions of Voodoo PC and Alienware, which look to have originally been added in bad faith by someone who persists in advertising those products all over Wikipedia.Flakeloaf 01:55, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I second that. A disproportionately large part of the article is devoted to bashing Creative - most of the points may be based on facts, but it's blatantly biased reporting. Also, the claim "while most dominant hardware manufacturers are seen as innovators, Creative is more famous for acquiring successful technology and adding it to their own portfolio" is at best contentious. Where's the reference for that? This reeks of weaseling.

I'm responsible for that edit, and while it does sound a bit weaslish, it's the truth. The references follow the statement. I've cleaned it up a bit to sound more neutral, and updated the information on their stock troubles to March 2006, but if I may be candid here (which is what talk pages are for), Creative isn't very. Again, it's not a blameworthy phenomenon, but their habit of acquiring and suppressing competing technology was extremely annoying. Flakeloaf 20:02, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

There's sections of the criticism part that highlight business practices used by this company, subtle "Zencast" rebranding, and the acquisitions.... Why are these a criticism when many many other companies use these sorts of practices to great effect?

Any company who has undisputed dominance over a market should be criticized for engaging in potentially unerhanded practices that undermine competition in ways that stifle innovation. Being a soapbox for that position is of course not Wikipedia's purpose, but the article should at least make *some* mention of these issues. I believe it's important for the article to catalogue (in some manner) Creative's significant attempts to steer the markets in which it competes. --HunterZ 21:18, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
You didn't answer the original question: why is Creative being singled out for criticism while other corporations are much more guilty? The "Podcast" vs "Zencast" issue was so inane that I honestly suspect Apple fanboys are trying to tear Creative apart and using Wikipedia for their own personal crusade. And how does "outsourcing" constitute a form of criticism? I won't be surprised if next time, I actually see grammatical errors on the company's website being offered as "evidence of ineptitude". Finally, let me just quote verbatim what's written on the company website: "'Podcasts, short for Personal On Demand broadcast, is defined in the New Oxford Amercian Dictionary as "a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player" '. Since podcasting has been accepted into normal English usage, there's no reason to criticize Creative for this.
Even the long paragraph on the "squeal of death" sounds suspicious. Granted this was a true hardware failure, but a Google search on the two terms turned up < 300 hits (on 25 Jul 2006). In contrast the Pentium fdiv bug turned up > 30000 hits (same day). One doesn't see the Pentium fdiv bug mentioned as a criticism of Intel, despite the fact that Intel first denied the problem then responded slowly to it. We honestly need more balanced viewpoints on this page. (P.S. In case no one realized that, Creative did produce the first harddisk-based MP3 player. Surely that qualifies as being creative to a certain extent? )
Except there's only one name for the fdiv bug; Audigy-related crashes were called any number of things, and theories on exactly what caused it and how to fix it were almost as numerous as complaints until the truth was discovered. It was an issue that affected the enthusiast/gamer market, which happens to be the bread and butter for the EAX sound card market. I do agree that the $PRODUCTcast snit is taking things a bit too far. I'm confused by your use of outsourcing - this implies hiring other agencies to do the work on one's behalf. Creative waits for the work to be finished before they intervene.Flakeloaf 14:09, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, then, please give some examples of different nomenclatures for the "squeal of death" as well as links for these different names. As for outsourcing, all companies do it - Dell, Walmart, IBM etc. Shall we also include them in the criticism section of each of these companies? If you have to include the "squeal of death" (which, frankly, is the first time I've heard of it), then shouldn't it be added to the Audigy page?
Use your imagination. Audigy + screech (1940), audigy + looping + crash (62,500), ExtremeTech documented it here: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,48708,00.asp. It's also mentioned in Creative's own KB (http://www.americas.creative.com/support/kbase/article.asp?ID=959&Centric=207). Again, I'm confused by your bringing outsourcing into this. Where did I say Creative was outsourcing? They buy other competing companies and bury their tech before it can threaten their position; that's not outsourcing.Flakeloaf 19:10, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
1940 is still significantly smaller than 30k. Forget the numbers - do you really think that people care more about the Audigy bug than the Pentium bug? Why is the Pentium bug not included in the Intel page while the Audigy bug is included here. Finally, outsourcing wasn't mentioned by you (I never said it was). It was mentioned by another user - go check the history of the page.
A shortcoming in one article can't be used to justify a shortcoming in another. The Pentium bug belongs on the Pentium page, not the Intel page, just as the Audigy bug belongs on the Audigy page, not this one. I agree with you that it should not be mentioned *here*, but it does merit mention somewhere.

[edit] Recent Creative news

Just for reference in case someone wants to research recent events for inclusion in the article at some point:

Older news:

Note that I'm (obviously) biased against Creative, so I wouldn't presume to add any of this to the article myself :) --HunterZ 21:09, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Additionally, their stock price seems to be significantly lower than quoted in the article (and, indeed, lower than the "all time low" reported in the article): http://quotes.nasdaq.com/quote.dll?page=charting&mode=basics&selected=CREAF&symbol=CREAF -- Steven Fisher 21:54, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of Criticism section.

Someone removed the Criticism section without discussing it first. I vehemently disagree with the removal, especially without having a discussion first. For reference, here is the removed section:

(snipped -F) I'm tempted to put this back into the article because of the removal without discussion. --HunterZ 18:30, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I've restored the disputed section with the NPOV warning intact and pruned your entry for brevity's sake (though I appreciate its inclusion since this blanking happened some time ago and I must've slept through it). Flakeloaf 04:00, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
I did the removal. Look at the entry for Apple Computer for example - the entire criticism section was removed even though there were many valid points. Unless there's extensive news coverage, this page does not deserve an additional "criticism section".
Allow me to copy and paste a user's comments from the talk page of "Apple Computer" : There's no inherent reason why the Apple Computer or Macintosh pages should be free of a criticism section; if they shouldn't have one, no page about a company or product should have one. However, there are cases where criticisms of a company are "notable", e.g. criticisms of ExxonMobil for the Exxon Valdez oil spill or Nestlé for their marketing of infant formula, so clearly "no criticism sections" is wrong. However, a criticism section shouldn't just be a forum for gripes (just as a Web page about a company or organization shouldn't be full of breathless enthusiasm about a company); WP:NOT a Web bulletin board. The same reasoning goes for Creative Labs. None of these criticisms are notable at all. Also, many of the questions raised about the criticism section (in this talk page) were not answered at all. Hence, the section definitely deserves to be removed.
Not notable in whose opinion? A large number of people really liked Soundstorm and looked forward to its inclusion on NForce 3 and 4 motherboards. Creative bought and buried it, replacing it with a heftier version of their Audigy card because it was a[n arguably] superiour product that threatened their dominance. Same for the Adlib Gold and Ensoniq products: a lot of people were looking forward to those offerings before they were swallowed and replaced with the "add an option and call it super" emu-xxx chip. It's not a blameworthy phenomenon as I've said before, and a lot of companies prefer acquisition to innovation, but that habit seems to have stifled Creative's own advancement and the advancement of the PC audio scene as a whole. These things don't make the news because reporters care about fuzzy animals covered in oil, not geeks who can't get their computers working or musicians whose DACs don't perform as advertised. I agree with you in principle; WP is not a bitchfest, but among people who know and understand good audio in general and PC audio in particular, the claim that Creative's audio hardware is "high-end" doesn't hold water. The squeal comment has to go; I agree that showed poor judgement, but the comments on innovation vs. acquisition and the false advertising bolstering competitors' business should remain in some form. Flakeloaf 19:49, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Are you sure you're not just extremely prejudiced here? According to the talk page on Soundstorm, NVIDIA produced their own drivers and did not depend on Sensaura for the middleware. Creative's purchase of Sensaura hence had nothing to do with its discontinuation. If you believe you know better, why don't you discuss it with the people there?

[edit] Third opinion

All information, but especially negative or critical information, must be verifiable and reliably sourced. Per the verifiability guidelines, any editor may challenge or remove unsourced information, and must immediately remove unsourced negative information. If these criticisms and problems can be cited in reliable sources, they might have a place in the article, but until then they most certainly do not. Seraphimblade 19:28, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

On the acquisition vs. innovation comments, the pages for AdLib, Ensoniq, Aureal and Sensaura all outline Creative's acquisition and subsequent burial of their tech, and are themselves reliably sourced. I understand WP can't use itself as a reliable source for obvious reasons, but this should still count as reliable, no? Similarly, the Audigy page describes the 24/96 vs 16/48 issue and the class action lawsuit that resulted. The mentions of M-Audio and Chaintech sound spurious though; there's no need to go listing a company's competitors in an article without a compelling reason and I'm not convinced this is good enough.Flakeloaf 19:49, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
That stuff shouldn't be in the other articles without being sourced either-perhaps look through the sourcing for those articles, see where they got it, and cite that source here as well? (If it's not sourced in those articles at all, it needs to be sourced or removed there as well.) Seraphimblade 20:02, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
I've just glanced through some of the articles. The page on Sensaura didn't say anything about their technology getting "buried", in fact it's an R & D division at Creative. Adlib's technology was already incorporated in Creative and certainly not "buried" - its Gold just wasn't popular enough to catch on. The page on Aureal did mention Creative acquiring Aureal's assets including all patents, but nothing about the technology "buried". Only the page on Ensonique mentioned something to that effect. Speaking of which, there're also major POV statements on Creative on those pages.
Technologies and Products section aside (which doesn't read at all well), I don't see the POV statement on Aureal's entry. The original AdLib comment that appeared on this page did not state that the AdLib technology was buried because it had already been duplicated and improved upon. The AdLib page sounds like a narrative instead of a statement of fact, but the narrative is accurate. I erred when I said Creative buried Sensaura's technology but what else would you call the disappearance of Soundstorm from the market? I also don't see the POV comments on the Sensaura page. I must confess to not having checked the Ensoniq page before mentioning them in this article, but now that I have read it I agree that it drips POV. I should have spoken more clearly. In any case, these are business practices that amount to market manipulation and are, at best, grounds for forming an unfavourable opinion. When wikipinion.org opens up perhaps someone will repeat those comments there. The Audigy DAC affair and the squeal crash belong on the Audigy page, and comments about the purchase and, where appropriate, subsequent disappearance from the market of their competitors' technology belongs on those companies' pages and not this one. I saw a Criticism section and decided to chime in with what are well-founded beliefs in the PC audio and PC hardware communities about the relative quality of these "high-end" sound products instead of doing the right thing and questioning why this little fab shop deserves a criticism section in the first place. A careful rereading of this article shows that it states only that Audigy cards are "better" than only their predecessors, and that third-party sound cards usually exceed the capability of on-board sound processors (with the exception of the now-defunct Soundstorm but I've beaten that horse's bones to dust). It sounds like we've closed in on NPOV on both sides. Hunterz, do you concur? Flakeloaf 19:39, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I support Flakeloaf's statements 100% but freely admit that I have become strongly biased against Creative in my personal views, which is why I have refrained from editing the article myself. At the very least, I believe that parts of the current article as-is paint a rosy picture of the corporate giant that smacks of POV spin generated by their powerful marketing machine while, for example, a different picture is presented by the hundreds of customers continue to clamor daily on Creative's own forums for some kind of support for the products that are floundering because they are based on technologies that Creative didn't develop in the first place.
If people feel strongly that Wikipedia should not allow discussion of any kind of controversy surrounding a corporation's marketplace tactics, then at least the marketing hype POV tone should be scrubbed out of what is in the article, and it should be left as little more than a sterile listing of their more notable products. It wouldn't be nearly as useful to anyone hoping to find out how exactly Creative has managed to maintain its market dominance (certainly not through developing superior products, and certainly not through superior support of them), but perhaps it would at least satisfy the Wikipedians and prevent it from escalating into an edit war.
--HunterZ 20:23, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree, and have scrubbed some of the extra polish off of the "Present Day" section. I'd rather err on the side of caution and have the article sound more self-congratulatry than less, but at the same time there were a few too many superlatives in there. On the flipside, is discussion of their stock trends absolutely necessary? Flakeloaf 21:10, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Trivia vandalism

FYI, the 'edit war' regarding 1981 vs 1982 that took place on June 23 2007 was the result of a trivia question at Million Man Lan 6, held in Louisville, Kentucky.

But was one heck of a great prank... Since I was the prankster.

[edit] Removed Dubious Material

I removed the following text from the article:

on March 30, mega-online computer parts retailer Newegg announced on several internet forums a delisting of Creative products. The retailer would suspend sale of Creative products until they completed an investigation into Creative's Vista support.

I did so for the following reasons: The material seemed dubious, as it is unlikely that such a large announcement would be made "on several internet forums"; It was unsourced; A quick web search found no sources for me.Ricree101 (talk) 07:12, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Class Action Lawsuit

I got this email today: https://www.creativehddmp3settlement.com/welcome.asp Class action lawsuit regarding the actual space on the hard drive mp3 player. A coupon doesn't seem worth my time, but it seems worthy enough to put in the article perhaps. Fruit Blender (talk) 01:14, 1 May 2008 (UTC)