Creative, you suck.

[NutWrench]

Creative Labs owes you $62

Little known lawsuits of our time

By Simon Burns in Taiwan: Tuesday 22 March 2005, 10:28
SINGAPOREAN soundcard maker, Creative Labs, has agreed to settle a class action lawsuit related to misleading marketing of its Audigy and Extigy range. Actually, it appears this settlement was agreed in principle at the end of last year, but few potential claimants yet know about it.

Creative claimed that the products in question could handle 24-bit audio at 96Khz – indeed this was stated on the product boxes in bold letters, and in all advertising. But complaints filed in 2003 pointed out that this was only true in a very limited set of circumstances, and pretty much all of the audio passing through the cards would actually be processed at lower quality.

The difference probably wouldn't concern the average gamer or casual MP3 enthusiast, but many of those planning to use the Creative cards for professional-quality audio were outraged by the labelling.

Owners of all of the original Audigy series are included in the proposed settlement. This includes the Audigy ES, Audigy Platinum, Audigy Platinum eX, Audigy Gamer, Audigy MP3+ and also the original Extigy external USB sound module.

Creative did not admit liability, but graciously agreed to settle the embarrasing case. Anyone, anywhere* who purchased one of these products before the end of 2004, and is unhappy with the audio processing, will be able to get 25 per cent off the cost of their next purchase from Creative's website, up to a limit of $62.50.

Hurry, this great offer ends September 25, 2005.

Meanwhile, the lawyers who helped inflict this savage punishment on Creative will get up to $470,000 for their work, it seems.

Interestingly, the three individuals who originally filed the complaint receive a mere $1000 to $3000 for all their trouble.

More information and legal documents here. µ

* IN NORTH OR South America only, apparently.

[/QUOTE]

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22019


I have an Audigy Gamer soundcard and that's the last Creative product I will be buying. They can take their 25 percent and cram it. http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif

[Iggy]

Don't care much about it, I got an Audigy 2 ZS and I'm happy with it. Besides, there aren't much other ones out there who can produce soundcards of equel or better quality.

[NutWrench]

Yeah, I know. Every soundcard company makes exaggerated claims about "superior listening experience." But I can see that for what it is. That's clearly a subjective opinion. Creative is lying about specific hardware features on their products and getting away with it. And they've avoided paying any real damages by secretly settling a class action lawsuit.

If someone sold you a car that was advertised as having air conditioning, satellite radio and a 2-year full service warrenty and you later discovered that it had NONE of those things, you'd be highly pissed, right?

The decent thing for them to do is replace these soundcards with soundcards that actually HAVE the features that Creative claimed on the box. But thanks to the class action lawsuit, you have no other option but to take that settlement or leave it.

[Mountain Man]

NutWrench said:
If someone sold you a car that was advertised as having air conditioning, satellite radio and a 2-year full service warrenty and you later discovered that it had NONE of those things, you'd be highly pissed, right?


It's more like an automaker claiming that a car gets 35 miles to the gallon when it actually only gets 25. But your main point remains: it's deceptive marketing.

But personally, I don't care if my Audigy Xgamer doesn't support true 24bit. That feature made no impact on my purchasing decision, so I can't honestly say I'm dissatisfied. Still, that $62.50 does sound mighty nice. Unfortunately, it can only be redeemed in Creative's online store making this a bit of an odd settlement in that it's essentially rewarding Creative for deceptive marketing.

[Scotty]

Didn't Creative use Diamond Multimedia's false advertising for the Monster II (based on the Aureal Vortex 2 chipset) as the basis for suing Aureal into bankruptcy? http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif

[Spyd]

I HATE Creative since I read that they filed a patent for a software algorythm that John Carmack had designed for Doom 3 and posted and discussed it online.
Some "genius" at creative had seen it and filed the patent only to sue after.
Just before Doom3 being released, Creative sued id Software saying the algorythm is theirs, and it finished with id software forced to implement EAX on Doom3 to be able to sell the game as "compensation".

Money hungry bastards. http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif

[Crispy Critters]

Those lawyers didn't try too hard if the only settlement they could get was a 25% off coupon to Creative's online store. Good job fellas http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif

[Phait]

NutWrench said:but many of those planning to use the Creative cards for professional-quality audio were outraged by the labelling.



Using a Creative for Pro Audio is a joke.

[Jeff]

Damn, I own the Audigy 2 ZS. I guess I can't get it. http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif

Oh well.

[NutWrench]

Spyd said:
Just before Doom3 being released, Creative sued id Software saying the algorythm is theirs, and it finished with id software forced to implement EAX on Doom3 to be able to sell the game as "compensation".

Money hungry bastards. http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif



Yeah, if Id had fought it in court, I think they would have ultimately prevailed, (http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?topic=14459&forum=9) but that would have prevented Doom 3 from being released until until the situation had been resolved. Doom 3 could have been held up for months.

Creative put the best possible spin on it with headlines like "Creative and id Software Announce DOOM 3 Engine/EAX ADVANCED HD Collaboration." but it was a shotgun wedding and I bet Carmack hates Creative like poison gas.

[Hudson]

I have an Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro and never had a single problem with it, I http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/love.gif it http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

[Tedski]

phait said:

NutWrench said:but many of those planning to use the Creative cards for professional-quality audio were outraged by the labelling.



Using a Creative for Pro Audio is a joke.



Basically using a CL card for anything other than listening to stuff through your pc, i.e. sound files or for gaming, is a large waste of time and effort. The recording capabilities are piss poor for the money you pay for them.
The other thing that drove me away from them in a big hurry was their appaling drivers and support. People have had long and justified moans about ATI stuff over the years for the self same reasons, but Creative, due to their immense market share, have got away with absolute blue murder. I've had more grief over the years with irq conflicts etc. that have been directly related to CLs crap drivers, than I really care to think about. Thank god I have nothing to do with them any more.

[TerminX]

Tedski said:

phait said:

NutWrench said:but many of those planning to use the Creative cards for professional-quality audio were outraged by the labelling.



Using a Creative for Pro Audio is a joke.



Basically using a CL card for anything other than listening to stuff through your pc, i.e. sound files or for gaming, is a large waste of time and effort. The recording capabilities are piss poor for the money you pay for them.
The other thing that drove me away from them in a big hurry was their appaling drivers and support. People have had long and justified moans about ATI stuff over the years for the self same reasons, but Creative, due to their immense market share, have got away with absolute blue murder. I've had more grief over the years with irq conflicts etc. that have been directly related to CLs crap drivers, than I really care to think about. Thank god I have nothing to do with them any more.


One of my boxes gets a STOP error every once in a while involving emu10k1.sys. F*cking Creative drivers.

[8IronBob]

Well, I don't necessarily have a Creative Sound Card, but I have a Creative Surround Sound System hooked into an integrated 5.1 sound card, if that's any different. I know that Creative may or may not be the best speaker system for 5.1 Surround Sound, but they certainly are not the worst, either. Creative's just behind Logitech and Altec Lansing as far as best speaker systems. Of course, that's in a set price range. Forget Bose or Klipsch, those are too pricey for anybody who wants a quick, low-cost, quality 5.1 system. I hear that Creative also has a Portable Media Center for $500? Well, I believe I've demoed it at Best Buy once already, it's okay, and it has 20 GB, but I prefer my Dell Axim X30 with a 1 GB SD Card (which is my "media" card), and that's just as good if not better to me.

[JimboC]

Crispy Critters said:
Those lawyers didn't try too hard if the only settlement they could get was a 25% off coupon to Creative's online store. Good job fellas http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif


When you sue a company the size of Creative, you're going up against a whole army of corporate lawyers who only work for the company. They can find ways to stall and delay the case indefinitely. As long as the company is willing to fights, they will have almost limitless resources. Eventually the person bringing the suit will run out of money or will die. Either way, Creative wins.

There's class action lawsuits here in the U.S. where the company at fault is so blatantly at fault it's not even funny. If the case ever gets to court they'll loose in a second. But after 20 years in some cases, the case has never made it to the actual trial stage. It's getting to be the same way in a lot of other countries.

Look at how long it's taking the U.S. Government to take down the tobacco companies. They've been going after them for over 40 years with the resources of the U.S. Government and only started making progress about 10 years ago. It'll probably be another 10 years before they're held truly responsible for the horrible things they've been doing to people.

Seems to be a whole new judiciary is needed to try these greedy corporate S.O.B.'s so that justice can actually be served.

Back on topic:
I could probably find a better price than that $60 off Creative's overly inflated list prices on their web pages. Why bother?

[Mountain Man]

Crispy Critters said:
Those lawyers didn't try too hard if the only settlement they could get was a 25% off coupon to Creative's online store. Good job fellas http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif


I guess you missed the part about the lawyers walking away with a cool half-million for their troubles. Wait, you thought the lawyers were actually interested in the settlement itself?

[Crispy Critters]

Look at how long it's taking the U.S. Government to take down the tobacco companies. They've been going after them for over 40 years with the resources of the U.S. Government and only started making progress about 10 years ago. It'll probably be another 10 years before they're held truly responsible for the horrible things they've been doing to people.



The government would never take down the tobacco companies because they get lots of tax dollars off of those things. If the government seriously wanted to take them down, they could do it easially, compared to one company (group of people for that matter) doing it themselves.

[Alcoholic 007]

phait said:

NutWrench said:but many of those planning to use the Creative cards for professional-quality audio were outraged by the labelling.



Using a Creative for Pro Audio is a joke.



Good to see some one has their head screwed on right.

I think creative has allways been a gamers card market anyway. Cheap and effective sound over most of the competition in the same range.

For pro... consider a $150+ if not $250+ audio card. Mine cost about $250 when I purchased it and it was ranked quite high in reviews by pro an amateurs alike... but it's still not the best I could have gotten. Who wants to pay even as much as I did? I still have not used mine for the purpose I purchased it either... doh!

[Mountain Man]

TerminX said:
One of my boxes gets a STOP error every once in a while involving emu10k1.sys. F*cking Creative drivers.


That's odd. I've never had a problem with Creative drivers on either Win98SE or XP.

[Wamplet]

Reminds me of that lawsuit with Nintendo over the high-priced games and the lawsuit result was a 5 dollar coupon to buy a game from them at their same old prices. http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/redface.gif

[NutWrench]

It's a settlement where Creative is not required to a) pay a penalty for their deception or b) fix the original problem they created.

Their solution is to give select people discount coupons to buy even more of their products. Since they lied about my previous purchase, I'm understandably less than thrilled about the idea of buying any more from them.

[Wamplet]

NutWrench said:
It's a settlement where Creative is not required to a) pay a penalty for their deception or b) fix the original problem they created.

Their solution is to give select people discount coupons to buy even more of their products. Since they lied about my previous purchase, I'm understandably less than thrilled about the idea of buying any more from them.



Agreed. That is no punishment at all for them. http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif

The "discount" is the equivalent of giving them some lube to rape consumers with next time.

[Spyd]

TerminX said:
One of my boxes gets a STOP error every once in a while involving emu10k1.sys. F*cking Creative drivers.


Yeah, Cretive has one of the worst driver policy ever. Their drivers are usually outdated, work bad, and finding the driver you need is a pain in the ass.
Then you have the "I don't know this card" problem. I have several cards that DOESN'T EXIST ON CL WEBSITE!, so you can't download their drivers.
And I have a Live 5.1 Digital that you only can download a driver update from their web, but this driver update doesn't work if you don't have the original drivers installed. And these original drivers aren't nowere in their web: if you lose the original driver CD, you're screwed.

ARGH! I could kill a Creative Labs employee right now.

[Orochi Avlis]

Spyd said:
And I have a Live 5.1 Digital that you only can download a driver update from their web, but this driver update doesn't work if you don't have the original drivers installed. And these original drivers aren't nowere in their web: if you lose the original driver CD, you're screwed.



I thought it was just me.
Same thing happens to me.
Or did, don't have that PC anymore.

[NutWrench]

Wamplet said:
The "discount" is the equivalent of giving them some lube to rape consumers with next time.



Heh. I thought of using that point in my last post but good taste prevailed. http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

[Phait]

Let me elaborate on the 'joke' bit.

I don't care what people use to make music, as long as the end product is well done and/or they're learning. If the end result is good, it doesn't matter what tools you use.

But, finding anyone in the professional music industry using Creative products for recording... good luck.

[Gatinater]

The whole not actually 24 bit thing was known moths after the original audigy was released. So this doesn't suprise me. I don't care either.

I've always used creative, because they have the best balance between compatability and quality.

[8IronBob]

It's just lucky that I only have Integrated 5.1 HD Audio, which is good enough. However, how much better does the Intel HD Audio compare to anything from the SB Live or Audigy series? With these surround sound speakers (from Creative no less), I really can't find where the difference lies in the quality, let alone for an integrated card. That deserves some investigation.

[DudeMiester]

For the love of God why won't someone else make a high quality mainstream sound card/chip? If some out of the blue company like Ageia can make a 125 million transistor PPU, then someone can damn well make a sound card that will brutally rape Creative once and for all.

[AlienAssKicker]

Nvidea GeSound cards, perhaps?

[Gatinater]

I grew up on sound Blaster so I will never like anything other than Sound Blaster. Plus I'm a gamer and any game that supports enviormental audio supports creative Labs enviormental audio.

I hear Turtle Beach and Gainward have good audio, but that's what I heard. I don't actually know. Allegro was good, but I don't know if that company is still around and I don't know if their product is still good.

Hercules made a pretty decent sound card.

I'm not a Fanboy and I'm not a hater. I'm not out looking for reasons to hate Creative nore am I trying to convince others to hate creative.

I don't like Glock, but I'm not out trying to get people to hate Glock. I prefer a Beretta over a Glock.

I grew up with Benelli, Beretta, Browning, Colt, Remington, Smith & Wesson, Springfield Armory, SigSauer, and Winchester. So I recomend a gun made by any of those manufacturers. Sure they've all had problems here and there and didn't deliver what they had promised at times just like creative has, but the fact is when their shit is wired right they make a superior firearm. Just like creative makes a superior sound card.

[Tedski]

Whilst they may well have made superior products in the past - the awe 32 springing to mind, they most certainly do not any more. The card I have performs recording functions far better than any creative card I have ever owned, and it does it simply. The quality is also far superior. For anything above listening, watching or playing games, creative cards shouldn't be recommended. If all you want to do with them is the above mentioned, then you can't go too far wrong ( unless you happen to hit problems with their crap drivers - because then you are on your own as their support is about as much use as a wet paper bag).

[DudeMiester]

Just because you grew up with something is a sad reason to prefer it, of course it does make you the love of marketers.
Anyways, reason would say to buy whatever provides acceptable quality for a reasonable price. Currently Creative provides neither, and yet there is no serious alternative product. There is a major problem here, and if it wasn't for Creative's monopolising/anti-trust actions there would have been someone to take advantage of it. Hopefully, Creative will soon become so fat and lazy, if they haven't already, that they will ***** themselves over once and for all.

[JimboC]

8IronBob said:
It's just lucky that I only have Integrated 5.1 HD Audio, which is good enough. However, how much better does the Intel HD Audio compare to anything from the SB Live or Audigy series?


Personally, I wouldn't use an Intel graphics or sound card for anything other than business type apps.

The main benefit of using a higher end sound card is that everything is supported in hardware, not the software drivers. CPU utilization will be lower. Sound quality can be increased without a hit on performance.

Most people wouldn't notice the difference unless they could hear them side by side. And using high quality speakrs will give you a better sound because there's less background noise with them. But you can't beat doing things in hardware over having the drivers do all the work.

[Spyd]

There's only 3 differences between a PCI sound card and an integrated (AC-97) one:

Integrated ones eat lots of processor time (it goes from 2% to 4% compared to a discrete sound card)
Usually integrated cards don't support EAX
Integrated cards are almost free, because they came with the motherboard.

[Phait]

I haven't even bothered to care about getting a dedicated soundcard. AC '97 has served well enough for me, and I'm just not interested in surround sound or any ultra-quality sound. I'm happy enough to have 2 channels of sound at all.