Jeder kennt noch die Creative Soundkarten von früher. Ich hab seit DOS Zeiten Karten der SoundBlaster-Reihe mein Eigen genannt. Geile Ausstattung, geiler Sound (für den Heimanwenderbereich) und EAX Unterstützung in den Spielen (unter Windows dann). Woooow. Und dann kam Microsoft's Vista. Und weil das böse, böse Microsoft die Treiberarchitektur geändert hat, war es auf einmal nicht mehr möglich DVD-Audio, Dolby Digital und DTS Signale zu decodieren. Zudem wurden an den Treibern noch andere Einschränkungen gegenüber dem Funktionsinhalt von XP gemacht. Allerdings bewarb Creative die Produkte als "Vista ready". Auch jetzt nach über einem Jahr, das Vista für Endkunden erhältlich ist, hat sich daran nichts geändert.

Nun ist allerdings nicht jeder so unfähig wie die Programmierer bei Creative (oder die Führungsebene der Firma, die es ihnen verbietet korrekt arbeitende Treiber zu implementieren). Jemand Namens Daniel_K hat es geschafft funktionierende Treiber zu veröffentlichen, die sowohl mit der 32bit, als auch der 64bit Version von Vista funktionieren. Das Creative darüber nicht erfreut ist, dürfte verständlich sein. Da kommt irgend so ein dahergelaufener Hobbyprogrammierer an und macht das, was man selber seit über 1 Jahr nicht gebacken bekommt (aus welchen Gründen auch immer) möglich. Deshalb geht Creative jetzt gegen diese Treiber vor.

Daniel_K:

We are aware that you have been assisting owners of our Creative sound cards for some time now, by providing unofficial driver packages for Vista that deliver more of the original functionality that was found in the equivalent XP packages for those sound cards. In principle we don't have a problem with you helping users in this way, so long as they understand that any driver packages you supply are not supported by Creative. Where we do have a problem is when technology and IP owned by Creative or other companies that Creative has licensed from, are made to run on other products for which they are not intended. We took action to remove your thread because, like you, Creative and its technology partners think it is only fair to be compensated for goods and services. The difference in this case is that we own the rights to the materials that you are distributing. By enabling our technology and IP to run on sound cards for which it was not originally offered or intended, you are in effect, stealing our goods. When you solicit donations for providing packages like this, you are profiting from something that you do not own. If we choose to develop and provide host-based processing features with certain sound cards and not others, that is a business decision that only we have the right to make.

Although you say you have discontinued your practice of distributing unauthorized software packages for Creative sound cards we have seen evidence of them elsewhere along with donation requests from you. We also note in a recent post of yours on these forums, that you appear to be contemplating the release of further packages. To be clear, we are asking you to respect our legal rights in this matter and cease all further unauthorized distribution of our technology and IP. In addition we request that you observe our forum rules and respect our right to enforce those rules. If you are in any doubt as to what we would consider unacceptable then please request clarification through one of our forum moderators before posting.

Phil O'Shaughnessy
VP Corporate Communications
Creative Labs Inc.

Forum Moderator
Creative Labs

Fadenscheinige Argumente seitens CL: Die Funktionen wurden aus Kostengründen, technischen Begrenzungen und wegen der nicht gegebenen Unterstützung für digitales Rechtemanagement nicht eingebaut. Ich stimme da eher jemandem aus dem Creative Forum zu:

I feel Creative saw this as an opertunity to con the consumer into believing that by adopting the Windows Vista operating system, they would be required the purchase new Creative hardware to once again be in a position to take advantage of Creatives technology and intellectual property, a blatent missuse of Creatives market position and extremely bad business practice. Creative has taken their customer base for idiots plain and simple, unfortunately for you, we're not, and incase you were any doubt of that, take a look at your finances. Its only going to get worse.

Creativer versucht unter dem angeblich unüberwindlichen Vorwand Windows Vista dem Kunden zu einem Neukauf zu überreden.

Ich für meinen Teil weiß, von welchem Hersteller ich mir keine Hardware - und schon gleich garnicht Soundkarten - mehr kaufen werde: Creative Labs.

Links:

Thread im Creative Labs Forum

Dateils sowie Download der Treiber für Vista von Daniel K (Download befindet sich unter dem letzten Bild)

*Update 02.04.2008*

Hier mal ein Zitat eines Users aus dem Creative Labs Forum - welches gelöscht wurde - und die "Arbeitspraktiken" von Creative beschreibt:

I haven't bought a Creative product since they sued Aureal out of business with bogus lawsuits.

Creative forced Advanced Gravis out of the soundcard business by using a grant from the Singaporean government to sell their soundcards below cost.

Creative bought out E-MU and Ensoniq. E-MUs technology, which Creative acquired and didn't actually create, forms the basis of every Creative soundcard since the Live.

Creative forced Aureal out of business by inundating them with bogus lawsuits. Creative infringed on Aureal's patents, not the other way around and even though Aureal won their counterclaims against Creative, the investers all pulled out and they were forced to sell out to Creative. So much for the patent system protecting the little guy. And it's a shame because A3D 2.0 was and still is lightyears ahead of EAX.

Creative forced nVidia out of the computer audio market by buying out Sensura. The nVidia SoundStorm on the nForce and nForce 2 was an actual discrete audio processing unit similar to what you find on a Creative soundcard except lightyears better since it actually supported Dolby encoding in realtime. It was based heavily on technology licensed from Sensura and when Creative bought them out, it marked the end of SoundStorm. 5 years after the original SoundStorm was released, Creative soundcards still can't do real-time Dolby encoding.

Creative then blackmailed John Carmack into including EAX support in the Doom 3 engine by threatening him and ID Software with bogus software patents. Creative didn't actually invent the method described in the patent in question and there is documented evidence of prior art but ID Software didn't have the resources to fight Creative and was forced to capitulate.

Creative's dominance in the discrete soundcards market comes not from making a good product but from questionable and immoral business tactics. They bully or acquire the competition anytime it poses a serious threat to Creative's discrete soundcard market share.

They've also convinced (or blackmailed game developers) into integrating EAX 5.0 into their games which is a proprietary Creative technology that no other soundcard can implement without paying royalties. This helps to create vendor lock-in and makes it hard for new soundcards to compete because they are almost always dinged on their reviews for lack of EAX 5 support despite it's proprietery nature. EAX is still just a bunch of gimmicky reverb effects that still can't hold a candle to A3D 2.0. It's a shame that so much innovation in the computer audio market has been stifled by Creative.

If there is any good news, it's that Creative is steadily loosing ground to onboard audio. It may be crappier and it may lack features and have poorer sound quality (though the X-Fi's sound quality isn't all that great considering Creative's choice of OpAmps and Capacitors) but they work and don't force you into a single vendor's standard.

Also, Vista eliminates the ability to use EAX with Microsoft's sound APIs (except through a hack like Alchemy). The new Vista sound API has it's own software DSP that provides EAX 5.0 level effects for all systems no matter what kind of soundcard with a minimum of CPU usage. Creative's days are numbered as a result and I say good riddance.

Erinnert mich so bisschen an die "Akte nVidia". (Falls wer dazu noch einen funktionierenden Link hat, bitte melden). Eine kritische Betrachtung der Akte nVidia könnt ihr hier nachlesen.

*Update 04.04.2008*

Mittlerweile scheint man angesichts der zahlreichen negativen Stimmen kalte Füße bei CL bekommen zu haben und man versucht es nun mit einer Kuscheltaktik:

We have read the strong feedback about Creative's forum post regarding driver development by Daniel_k and other outside parties.  Creative's message posted on our behalf by our Company spokesperson tried to address our concern about the improper distribution of certain software which is the property of other companies.  However, we did not make it as clear as we would have liked that we do support driver development by independent third parties.  The huge task of developing driver updates to accommodate the many changes in the Vista operating system and the extensive testing required, including the lengthy Vista certification requirements for audio, makes it very difficult for Creative to develop updates for all past products.  Outside developers have been very helpful to Creative and our customers by developing updates for many of our Sound Blaster products, and we do support and appreciate these efforts.  This however does not extend to the unauthorized distribution of other companies' property.  We hope to work out a mutually agreeable method for working with Daniel_k in supporting his efforts in driver development.  Going forward, we are committed to doing a better job of working more closely with third parties to support their development for our products and our customers.

Na falls da mal nicht trotzdem schon der Zug abgefahren ist.