Last Audigy2 Driver
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy series Vista Driver 2.12.0002 (38.30 MB) 16 Mar 07

Known issues:

• Applications from the original Sound Blaster Audigy CD will not work with this download.
• Users are advised to use Audio Console included in this download to change speaker configurations.
• This driver does not support the following:
  • Decoding of Dolby® Digital and DTS™ signals
  • DVD-Audio
  • DirectSound®-based EAX games
  • Gameports
  • 6.1 speaker mode.

16 Mar 07....

Dear Phil,

I hope you had a nice weekend. A lot has happened since you posted that message on Friday...

The message that you sent to Daniel_K to protect Creative IP had an unintended effect. It was probably better to keep such messages private, it was probably a much better idea to handle this in a completely different manner. But since you posted it on a public message board, it was spread over the ENTIRE INTERNET. We, the users of the Internet, would like to welcome you to the Internet Age.

In the Internet Age, information tends to have a snowball effect. A message isn't passed from one person to another, it's passed from one person to hundreds. And then those hundreds of people send that message off to millions of people. During those two days you had off, everyone was talking and Creative (you) wasn't responding. It's not just the 500 or so people who have responded to this e-mail... If you add three zeroes (500,000), you can imagine the impact of your message. A person who's had bad customer service tends to tell ten people... In other words, your communications team has a lot of damage control to do this Monday morning.

What is more important than a companies IP is their reputation. This message you sent upset a lot of people who were dedicated to buying Creative products. A lot of them won't come back. What does that do to Creative's bottomline?

A better approach would have been to acknowledge the frustration building in the Vista driver situation, and work with the Internet community to find a solution. Symbolically punishing Daniel_K for trying to help was a very bad move; it made the frustration spread to a lot of people who were not directly involved.

You will probably not respond to this message, but we suspect Human Resources will be calling you this morning. We hope you take this message to heart, and we wish you good luck in your future endeavors beyond Creative.

Signed,

The Internet Community

- RickStock

I am sorry to burst your bubble, but they are allowed to delete your post ( you lose rights to it once it is posted) because there are things known as terms of use

- Community

It is to my understanding that, from reading thier message, the problem is not Daniel_k modding drivers for the creative hardware. It is using creative drivers for non-creative hardware, and his requests for donations as that is profiting off of creative software. I also agree that creative should hire someone of his calibur.

This message is to DALE_CL.

I realize your just the moderator of this tiny slice of CL's empire. I think it is incumbent upon you to make the "management" realize that this is no longer about what you guys did to Daniel_K. This has now moved to much larger and potentially far more damaging level for CL. Obviously it's already a terrible PR nightmare that will surely cost Phil his job. It's also abundantly clear to me and many others from reviewing nearly all the posts on this thread that CL has had for YEARS a practice of planned obsolescence. For years it seems fairly easy to prove now that you've been putting out substandard drivers to force users to upgrade to your new hardware platforms when it wasn't really necessary. And now with Vista you guys have really put your foot in it. You promised the public something you wouldn't deliver on hoping people would just buy your "Next big thing" to fix the problem. So what do you have to worry about? I am confident that shortly into next week someone will start a class action suit against CL probably going all the way back to SBL5.1 but for sure for your current line as it pertains to Vista. Now if CL goes national and tosses old Phil under the bus and apologizes for his "mistake" it might calm things down but I think the genii is out of the bottle now.

Ung. What a convoluted sign-up. Couldn't be bothered (Clearly as others have felt as well).

I've owned a number of Creative products in the past. I currently have the X-Fi Fatality in my system. I run Vista, and even with ALchemy et cetera, performance is lack-luster at best. It seems any 'benefits' of the 'hardware' acceleration are dumped down the tubes by the card having to have a software emulator essentially for most games. Even then, with supported games (Which honestly will continue increasing), the quality difference + CPU reduction doesn't bode well and is not a value at all anymore. Added 'channels' are a gimmick they throw at you in BF2142 for example, much like the Crysis 'DX10' (And the Shadowrun and many others). Its all marketing, and with consumers getting smarter, they're catching on to these marketing ploys (fraud?) far quicker. Let's face it, even though Creative puts themselves as being cutting-edge, their edge is minimal anymore, if non-existant except from the angle of a marketing edge. My experience with the X-Fi Fatal1ty has been poor at best, especially on the driver aspect. They've gotten fat and lazy, so-to-speak, and their stocks show a down-turn over the years.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=CREAF.PK&t=5y&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=

I've been eying up alternate Creative products, but I start having memories of some of the other historical 'support' issues. If this is their attitude, as to not support future software much past a short timeframe, I don't want to even try. Windows 7 is slated for 2010, and if my X-Fi is going to be 'defunct' in 2 years, I'm not going to touch them again. I was thinking of buying a Zen, but if this is their attitude toward people trying to help out a community where they are failing miserably (Or intentionally to increase hardware sales thinking they are the only option out there *cough*ASUS Xonar*cough*), I will not touch their product again.

Anyways, too much typing to waste on a company not willing to make an effort back - I could be making money instead. To Creative; Good Riddance.

Every time I see Creative's name somewhere I wonder how you have managed to stay in business. Back when you had to buy sound cards, I always chose Creative, because they were the best. But now, every computer, even homebuilt ones comes with a soundcard. These sound cards almost always have drivers preloaded in every major OS and satisfy the needs of 98% of PC users. The remaining 2% are a fickle bunch. They are willing to pay lots of money for a small improvement, but despite this, they never want to feel cheated. They are also knowledgable. They research things before they buy them and will often chose to not buy from a company on moral grounds.

By failing to provide adequete drivers and attacking the person who has, you have lost your status as a high-end company in my eyes, and the eyes of much of existing customer base. When people who want "the best of the best" (the only ones buying soundcards nowadays) realize that not only are you unwilling to provide support, you stop others from providing it for you, they will leave you, and you will have nothing left.

Creative Labs is a sinking ship. I don't know what kinds of business decisions you are trying to make, but pissing off the few customers you have left is not a good one.

". 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. "

SHAME ON YOU, creative labs for saying that when YOU steal from YOUR CUSTOMERS, it is actually them stealing from you!

What have you done when a customer holds in their hands a piece of YOUR hardware, and yet you have, through your inaction, INTENTIONALLY made that hardware no longer work?

What you have done is this: ***YOU*** have stolen from your own customers. When this gentleman came along and enabled them to use YOUR PRODUCTS, I just cannot BELIEVE the GALL that you would imply he is stealing SIMPLY because you HOPED your customers would find your product unable to function but they did not.

FURTHERMORE, this gentleman probably SAVED YOU SOME CUSTOMERS! Had they actually found your product useless as you had hoped, they might have bought a competitor's product as replacement.

This is some of the worst behavior I have ever seen from a company and I have no doubt that you will get what you deserve: quite an embarassing PR nightmare until you apologize and explain yourselves.

I'm glad that Creative in these hard economic times is so flush with customers that they can afford to pull something so obviously STUPID as to drive away more than a few long term and potential customers.

I am one of those long term customers that after struggling with increasingly lackluster products and support and now reading this have decided to speak with my wallet and spend my money elsewhere.

I have been very brand loyal to Creative starting in 1987 with the purchase of a Sound Blaster 1 and continuing to the point I read this insane post, but thanks to a very tangeble drift away from quality, support and customer service in general along with this action Creative has lost a very loyal customer.

Even though it is barely a molecule in the corporate bucket, my first action will be to forego the purchase of a Zen next week (for a birthday present) and instead purchase a Sansa.

I have read some posts both here and on other boards calling for a "boycott" of Creative products. To me this implies resuming an economic relationship with Creative once the unpopular/undesirable practice (aka this BS) has stopped or changed, I for one will not be returning as a Creative customer EVER regardless of their actions after this incident.

jurschel I am not a mod.

I am trying to remain neutral in this debate, yes I do work in the industry but I am not associated with Creative Labs Inc.

However what I would say is that a lot of people don't seem to realise that there is a licence agreement which everyone agrees to when you install the driver.

It's no surprise that Daniel had his wrists slapped.

However I don't think Daniel's mods to provide support for Audigy users on Vista was the problem, I firmly believe it was the Dolby Digital Live mod for X-Fi users which caused this whole can of worms to explode.

John