TQ: Did you read my post?
I mentioned auzentech's product in it.

I also mentioned several ways creative stifled innovation

Here's a little more detail on part of it

a) most people use motherboard sound. I dont recall the exact stats, but its something like 90% or more of people use motherboard sound.
Wait, I just remembered something, here's the stats on the average gamer:
http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html
Its not 90%, but those stats are for gamers, not average person, and it doesn't show what the mix of "other" is.

b) Given that, what kind of people buy a separate sound card? Well music people are one, and yeah, there has been some innovation in terms of music sound cards. Whats the other biggest category? Gamers. Just to make it clear, I'm talking about gamers and gaming cards in how they've stifled it. I'm not a pro musician, and I'm sure there's been advances in that area, especially since you aren't "locked" (see futher down) into choosing a creative card to get advanced EAX if you are a musician.

c) what do gamers want? Good gaming sound, which generally means EAX. What cards offer advanced EAX (I'm talking EAX 3,4,5, etc) sound? NONE except creative (see previous comment and the blues story above). See those stats I linked above, as far as I can tell the biggest categories of add on cards that gamers use are creative. EAX is a closed spec. So it almost doesn't matter what non creative cards do, the majority of gamers are going for creative and EAX. So yeah, thats kinda stifled things.

d) the main exception are gamers who want something quick/cheap and go for a $20 or so off name brand, and even then there are creative options, past generations yeah, but they are there.

e) auzentech with their prelude is just about the only exception that has full eax sound, because they use the x-fi chip. And its a recent exception, up until about a year ago, there were no exceptions.

TQ:
Also, I mentioned OpenAL in my post, again did you read it? That's what Alchemy is based on. And if you are lucky, your game is on the list of supported ones. You think most old games are there on the supported list? Hah
BTW, here's a direct link to supported titles:
http://connect.creativelabs.com/alchemy/Lists/Games/AllItems.aspx
They don't even have HALF LIFE on the list!! I go back and replay that game occasionally and it offered surround sound. Plus, what about Counter Strike, which is only the worlds most popular online FPS game (it STILL is btw, despite all the newer games)? Nope sorry, can't do surround sound in vista in those games, only stereo. If you have someone coming up behind you, tough.
Edit: After a further check of the list, they do list some steam games under STEAM (instead of individual titles). However the info they list is marked as unverified, so they haven't bothered to check to see if the most popular online FPS game in the world works with surround in vista.


Here's another stifling thing, they've had the ability to EASILY add existing innovations to existing products, but instead wait year(s) until they release their next gen cards. They wouldn't even have to release the innovations for free, they could charge a fee to add something like dolby digital live sound and people like me would be glad to pay for it if it was reasonably priced, since they could offer it as a download it would have very little overhead costs, they've already paid the R&D costs since they add the things into future generations, all the need to pay are the driver teams, and they are probably just saleried employees already. So it even makes good business sense to do something like this.



And finally, what exactly has creative offered since the days of the Live! (which BTW, one of the big advantages was supposed to be a powerful SOFTWARE programmable chip, thats what creative was hyping about in those days. And they never took advantage of it, even though they've used similar chips since then in all thier cards. Heck they could have opened up the specs of the chip itself and let other people do all the work for free of adding features and improving things. This would have actually INCREASED the demand for creative hardware, which is basically all they are selling since thier software/driver support is such suck. Example, look at all the sales of linksys wrt54g router when they released all the firmware as open source in a buildable format. ) ?

Hmm, better quality inputs/ouputs. YEAH THATS A INNOVATION! Not. Its a logical evolutionary progression.
Hmm, higher khz for recoding and playback. YEAH THATS AN INNOVATION! Not. Again, its a logical evolutionary progression.
Hmm, higher bit rate in recording and playback. YEAH THATS AN INNOVATION! Not. Again, a logical evolutionary progression.
Hmm, EAX 5! YEAH THATS AN INNOVATION! Not really, its the closest thing X-Fi has to one, but its still not exactly an innovation. I haven't noticed any huge leap in gaming sound quality compared to EAX 4.

And... thats about it!

This comment was edited on Mar 25, 15:49.