Talk:Creative Technology

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)

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.

• 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.

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)