Creative Buys Aureal Assets

DAMMIT!!!!!!!!

There's really not that much more room for innovation in audio anyway.

You know when you step outside (especially in the city) and close your eyes you can hear all kinds of miscellaneous shit that all blends together realistically? I still wonder why we can't be fooled into hearing that same level of detail yet... I mean, I've seen those styrofoam dummy heads with mic's for ears, in order to pick up the sounds, and time diff's, just like our melonheads do... I suppose for synthesis, the sfx cards themselves just don't mix enough random crap channels to be realistic enough... *shrug*

What everyone seems to be forgetting is nVidia's sound/broadband chipset. Competition is coming. Oh yes.

I don't even know what to say of this annoucement. They better offer Windows 2000 driver support for A3D cards. So basically they paid $28 million to pay off of patents they stole from Aureal. That fucking sucks.

My only hope is that they'll offer some kind of driver support in the future. I'm seriously considering buying Creative's 8X 4X 32X CDR-RW drive because of there execellet driver support for there products even on new OS's like Win 2000(albiet slow on the sound drivers for some reason). Anyone want to argue that their FastTrax program for NVIDIA beta drivers is really conveinent? With the problems that HP & Adaptec has with Windows 2000 driver support it makes me woundere if there is anyone out there that supports its products faster and better qualitly than Creative. Hell, they even update their modem drivers for Windows 2000.

Man they better annouce something soon about what they're going to do with Aureal now. :(

Looks like SoundBlaster Live! is here to stay for a few more decades :(

Well, here's my dream card:

64 mixed sources
96khz 24bit final output
up to 6 discrete channels (5.1, 4.1, quad, prologic, stereo)
prologic reencoding of internal 5.1 source
A3D-like reflection and occlusion
20bit Burr-Brown D/A (although with 96khz, this isn't so important)
Break-out box with it's own power supply, D/A, digital out, and 6 RCA jacks
Good drivers

Umm. That's it I guess. EAX is a fucking joke. Might as well use a software filter. I swear Half-life sounds better with their software reverb prefabs that what EAX comes up with.

The sound card market completely blows right now. Nothing significant has happened since the AWE32. Guess that's why I haven't bothered upgrading my AWE64. :P

The one nice thing about this is that Creative is probably going to take the Vortex line of cards and tear out the good parts, and create one HELL of a sound card.

The bad part is that after releasing that one killer card, They're probably just going to sit on their hands until Yamaha or ESS puts out something good.

All I know is that my next card is going to be a Creative Soundblaster, no questions asked (although just the basic parts, because I don't need that Livedrive shit).

FrO

They better offer Windows 2000 driver support for A3D cards.

Heh, don't even have EAX working properly in Win2K yet!

Haha... A3D, Creative OWNS J00!!! :)

Well, I hope this is good news for A3D supporters...

"Okay, so Tim Sweeney hasn't driven his Ferrari Diablo into Willard's 2000 Mitsubishi Eclipse GT. But how do the guys handle stress? "

http://www.gamespy.com/articles/september00/cmps2ut/index3.shtm

from the gamespy article

bleh - real mean know the countach (despite driving like shit) has it's sexy sleek hard edges and is the ultimate in vehicles.

to add to that.. "ferrari diablo" ? mmm

Clarification on the reencoding. I think a sound card should always process a 5.1 source (say, a DVD or 5.1 enhanced game) as 6 discrete channels internally. Then, based on what speaker setup you told the drivers you have, it will 'downmix' or reencode the signal to work with your setup.

Say you want to watch a DVD that only has 5.1 and normal stereo, but you have a prologic setup. You can go ahead and choose 5.1, and the sound card will do its best to take the rear channels of the 5.1 and encode them as prologic. The subwoofer would of course just be added into the stereo mix.

For a normal stereo (or prologic, or quad) source when used with 5.1 speakers, a few options for how to handle the signal would also be nice. For instance "add in the center," "try-to-find-rear-channels-of-prologic," or "just give me straight stereo."

The bastards! At least Philips announced some good sound cards, otherwise there wouold be no competition for Creative at all....

I want to see DTS / 5.1 / Full DOLBY fucking Doughnuts in my PC....

I care not for this faked 3d audio

Here i'll explain my dream card again


Ultra l33t dolby works support
digital output / optical / whatever you need etc - with the decoder on the card so you dont need 9999$ decoder or whatever from the stereo.

There needs to be also a "fake it" plug on the card for people who cant afford the l33t speakers which does all the right sounds, just output in standard analog mode (similar to aureals duel speaker port thing)

front
back
subwoofer
3 analog outputs

1 optical digital output
1 whatever other proper dolby output

inputs applenty

true decoding etc, some nice wavetable and midi - 200$ USD$ card alone.
I'm HAPPY to pay that it would pretty much be the "be all and end all" - basically all the cards available now in one - the yamaha dolby cards, live and aureal cards all into one nice card - with HARDWARE support so no fucking slow down

FUCK a3d's fps decrease
half life "blowout"
33fps on my C450a (cpu problem admitedly)
21fps with a3d

33%!!!! FUCK OFF
:(

Welcome back the days for the $200 standard sound card!

Nvidia looks to have something going with its x-box chip. Look for it to move over to the PC too.

I liked Aureal. I didn't like their driver support however. Creative has the power to be either a tardy monolith or a benevolent superhero now.

/me wonders which one would be more fun to watch...

WWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

This is a sad day, IMHO. I just hope Nvidia or someone else comes into the standalone sound market. Anybody else remember sound card prices and feature stagnation that we saw before Aureal?

Competition = Good

Lawsuits into oblivion (which Aureal was winning, btw) = bad

I kind of hope that Creative will roll full A3D support and some other implementation particulars of Aureal's into a driver update for the SBLive.

I'm not even going to get started on the pathetic state of the patent system. I'll waste hours ranting if I do.

well, it's final then. I'll never be buying another creative product again.

hehe oh so close..
Man I liked Aureal..

pft :)