In Vista, MS deprecated the DirectSound API, in favour of the Xbox's XACT API. They provides compatibility with older DirectSound applications through a software emulator which doesn't allow for hardware acceleration.
However, there's still the possibility of using OpenAL hardware audio rendering. Creative has released a hardware acceleration driver for select SoundBlaster hardware using OpenAL under Windows Vista.
I think solid hardware acceleration drivers for sound in Vista at this stage is limited to the Creative X-Fi models. That's what I read in a recent PC Overclocker magazine, IIRC.
Bizzare why MS deprecated DirectSound leaving the only significant consumer/prosumer outboard audio manufacturer in the dust. Whereas DirectX10 for GPUs, nVidia, ATI, and their OEM manufacturers all seem to be solidly in the loop for Vista GPU hardware acceleration. *And* Vista is backwards compatible with hardware GPU acceleration (DirectX9.0c IIRC) which means a number of nVidia 6-series, nVidia 7-series, and ATI x1-something-00 Radeons.
Under $40m net profit a year? I thought Creative were bigger than that.
In effect the ~$100m Apple gave them is 2.5 years net profits at once.
It'd be amusing if Creative started making more money from iPod accessories than its own line of players.
they keep putting all their money in advertisements/marketing for crappy MP3 players... they keep banking on taking large shares of that market-- thus they deserve their crappy profits.
If they had focused on what has always been their core market (sound cards) and accessories they would be doing a lot better... especially since no real audo-file nowadays would buy a high end creative card (sorry, adding in frequencies to "fix" music = crap... so is the line they have been using about being "better than the original recording").
Im surprised the shareholders havent thrown out the board-- glad to see they have finally come to their senses and will "ally" with apple and make Ipod accessories and *hopefully* decent sound cards again.
I think solid hardware acceleration drivers for sound in Vista at this stage is limited to the Creative X-Fi models. That's what I read in a recent PC Overclocker magazine, IIRC.
Bizzare why MS deprecated DirectSound leaving the only significant consumer/prosumer outboard audio manufacturer in the dust. Whereas DirectX10 for GPUs, nVidia, ATI, and their OEM manufacturers all seem to be solidly in the loop for Vista GPU hardware acceleration. *And* Vista is backwards compatible with hardware GPU acceleration (DirectX9.0c IIRC) which means a number of nVidia 6-series, nVidia 7-series, and ATI x1-something-00 Radeons.
It seems as though MS has been attempting to take as much control over the audio/video as they can. They have been depreciating the older code, and replacing it with code that is more tied to their system, and more DRM friendly.
It seems as though MS has been attempting to take as much control over the audio/video as they can. They have been depreciating the older code, and replacing it with code that is more tied to their system, and more DRM friendly.
Makes sense on the audio side with Zune. Poor Creative. Really. It's just that outboard audio has reached some sort of limit (the "human" limit) and hence *onboard* audio has become a commodity game.
Creative, seeing its mp3 player market and success be limited, might have ventured strongly in digital music production, I mean, something they did play around with in the mid-to-late-90's with the SoundBlaster AWE range, which gave you excellent hardware sounds and ability to load samples onto the card. Yet this push in the early to mid-2000's was decimated by powerful CPUs that create sounds and mangle samples purely in CPU (Reason, Logic, AbletonLive, GarageBand) and the solid *outboard* affordable hardware for music was so strongly dominated (and with good reason, from my personal experience) by M-Audio. ( http://www.m-audio.com ). M-Audio's continued level of product innovation and adoption by enthusiast, prosumer to high-level pros is staggering.
Almost a textbook failure, in the business history of Creative. Still, fair enough it's still a somewhat profitable company, offering jobs and carving out it's EAX and X-Fi niche. \ Though now, who knows what direction they can explore.
For those who did put out some cash for Creative boards in their PCs, here are some links (AFAIK) as to Creative's remaining hopes for Vista, culled from the Creative Forums:
It seems as though MS has been attempting to take as much control over the audio/video as they can. They have been depreciating the older code, and replacing it with code that is more tied to their system, and more DRM friendly.
Luckily unless Microsoft starts making GPUs, nVidia and ATI and their OEMs have their asses covered, and all they gotta do is toe the line with DirectX10, and whatever is the smoothest pathway upwards, also with regard to "Physics" add-on cards, whose value is still somewhat questionable.
Microsoft can't touch the GPU makers yet, but they have been relentless in crushing OpenGL though - which sucks for Open Source and Mac Gaming.
In any case, nVidia and ATI/AMD are desperately (seriously, have you seen what a mammoth the nVidia 8-series is?) trying to get to 65nm and 45nm to deliver that high-res photorealistic graphics within some decent performance-per-wat-per-dollar envelopes.
Similarly with Creative on the home/enthusiast (but not Pro) audio side, nVidia and ATI can only go *so far* with delivering HDCP/ HDTV/ up to 1080p for media centers. In fact, they've already done this, and have hardware GPU decoding for near-flawless 1080p playback. Luckily the growth space for nVidia and ATI is richer, more immersive, fluid, high-res, more-and-more-photorealistic graphics for both PCs and 3rd gen/ 4th gen (??) consoles. Remember what our iLeader preached: something like only 26million game consoles sold in 2006, and almost 800million PCs. Take what you will from these stats (if I remember them correctly anyway) but GPU makers have got their growth plans fairly covered, seeing as Intel is focused on integrated stuff which is *nowhere* near nVidia and ATI's stuff. For now ()...
Sadly, Creative's play for the pro music making market was the purchase of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mu which I think they totally frigged up. They could have taken those resources from E-mu to start making some decent offerings for the mid-end pro market (just below say DigiDesign and so-on), but from the turn of the century the space that E-mu was supposed to really deliver on got dominated by M-Audio. In any case Avid owns M-Audio and DigiDesign now, so, whatever E-mu really offered is all relegated to a few museum exhibits now.
Luckily unless Microsoft starts making GPUs, nVidia and ATI and their OEMs have their asses covered, and all they gotta do is toe the line with DirectX10, and whatever is the smoothest pathway upwards, also with regard to "Physics" add-on cards, whose value is still somewhat questionable.
Microsoft can't touch the GPU makers yet, but they have been relentless in crushing OpenGL though - which sucks for Open Source and Mac Gaming.
In any case, nVidia and ATI/AMD are desperately (seriously, have you seen what a mammoth the nVidia 8-series is?) trying to get to 65nm and 45nm to deliver that high-res photorealistic graphics within some decent performance-per-wat-per-dollar envelopes.
Similarly with Creative on the home/enthusiast (but not Pro) audio side, nVidia and ATI can only go *so far* with delivering HDCP/ HDTV/ up to 1080p for media centers. In fact, they've already done this, and have hardware GPU decoding for near-flawless 1080p playback. Luckily the growth space for nVidia and ATI is richer, more immersive, fluid, high-res, more-and-more-photorealistic graphics for both PCs and 3rd gen/ 4th gen (??) consoles. Remember what our iLeader preached: something like only 26million game consoles sold in 2006, and almost 800million PCs. Take what you will from these stats (if I remember them correctly anyway) but GPU makers have got their growth plans fairly covered, seeing as Intel is focused on integrated stuff which is *nowhere* near nVidia and ATI's stuff. For now ()...
MS does control the GPU market by controlling the specs they have to design to. The gpu manufacturers must process the code MS provides. It's that simple. Even Intel has no choice there. As they bring more of this control in-house, third party hardware companies become more dependent on MS for them to sell more boards, just as the PC companies have become dependent on them for new machine sales, and software companies have, for upgrades.
Sadly, Creative's play for the pro music making market was the purchase of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mu which I think they totally frigged up. They could have taken those resources from E-mu to start making some decent offerings for the mid-end pro market (just below say DigiDesign and so-on), but from the turn of the century the space that E-mu was supposed to really deliver on got dominated by M-Audio. In any case Avid owns M-Audio and DigiDesign now, so, whatever E-mu really offered is all relegated to a few museum exhibits now.
The last expensive audio boards from Creative had generated little but criticism from the PC community. They didn't sell well.
As you say, onboard audio has become "good enough".
It's why a market for them never developed in Apple territory.
I have one of the very first stereo boards for my old 950. It recorded stereo as well as played it back.
After that, stereo was built-in, and the board market never had a chance to grow. We have had, and do have now, pro audio boards. But, that is a different market.
The last expensive audio boards from Creative had generated little but criticism from the PC community. They didn't sell well.
As you say, onboard audio has become "good enough".
It's why a market for them never developed in Apple territory.
I have one of the very first stereo boards for my old 950. It recorded stereo as well as played it back.
After that, stereo was built-in, and the board market never had a chance to grow. We have had, and do have now, pro audio boards. But, that is a different market.
Just a few years ago the G4 machines' onboard audio was 16bit-44khz, which is why when I was producing with Reason/ Rewire/ AbletonLive I used M-Audio's outboard 2-in 4-out or something like that to get Reason to synth in the 24bit-48khz space (makes a BIG difference)...
Now I just went to Audio Midi Settings on my MacBook, and it's looking like the Intel mobo here can do 24bit-96khz --- and that's optical line in / optical line out if needed ....!!
Just a few years ago the G4 machines' onboard audio was 16bit-44khz, which is why when I was producing with Reason/ Rewire/ AbletonLive I used M-Audio's outboard 2-in 4-out or something like that to get Reason to synth in the 24bit-48khz space (makes a BIG difference)...
Now I just went to Audio Midi Settings on my MacBook, and it's looking like the Intel mobo here can do 24bit-96khz --- and that's optical line in / optical line out if needed ....!!
Yeah, but for most purposes that's overkill. There's no evidence that going that high gives an audible benefit. 20/48 is considered to be the last audible step. I agree.
Comments
In Vista, MS deprecated the DirectSound API, in favour of the Xbox's XACT API. They provides compatibility with older DirectSound applications through a software emulator which doesn't allow for hardware acceleration.
However, there's still the possibility of using OpenAL hardware audio rendering. Creative has released a hardware acceleration driver for select SoundBlaster hardware using OpenAL under Windows Vista.
I think solid hardware acceleration drivers for sound in Vista at this stage is limited to the Creative X-Fi models. That's what I read in a recent PC Overclocker magazine, IIRC.
Bizzare why MS deprecated DirectSound leaving the only significant consumer/prosumer outboard audio manufacturer in the dust. Whereas DirectX10 for GPUs, nVidia, ATI, and their OEM manufacturers all seem to be solidly in the loop for Vista GPU hardware acceleration. *And* Vista is backwards compatible with hardware GPU acceleration (DirectX9.0c IIRC) which means a number of nVidia 6-series, nVidia 7-series, and ATI x1-something-00 Radeons.
Under $40m net profit a year? I thought Creative were bigger than that.
In effect the ~$100m Apple gave them is 2.5 years net profits at once.
It'd be amusing if Creative started making more money from iPod accessories than its own line of players.
they keep putting all their money in advertisements/marketing for crappy MP3 players... they keep banking on taking large shares of that market-- thus they deserve their crappy profits.
If they had focused on what has always been their core market (sound cards) and accessories they would be doing a lot better... especially since no real audo-file nowadays would buy a high end creative card (sorry, adding in frequencies to "fix" music = crap... so is the line they have been using about being "better than the original recording").
Im surprised the shareholders havent thrown out the board-- glad to see they have finally come to their senses and will "ally" with apple and make Ipod accessories and *hopefully* decent sound cards again.
I think solid hardware acceleration drivers for sound in Vista at this stage is limited to the Creative X-Fi models. That's what I read in a recent PC Overclocker magazine, IIRC.
Bizzare why MS deprecated DirectSound leaving the only significant consumer/prosumer outboard audio manufacturer in the dust. Whereas DirectX10 for GPUs, nVidia, ATI, and their OEM manufacturers all seem to be solidly in the loop for Vista GPU hardware acceleration. *And* Vista is backwards compatible with hardware GPU acceleration (DirectX9.0c IIRC) which means a number of nVidia 6-series, nVidia 7-series, and ATI x1-something-00 Radeons.
It seems as though MS has been attempting to take as much control over the audio/video as they can. They have been depreciating the older code, and replacing it with code that is more tied to their system, and more DRM friendly.
It seems as though MS has been attempting to take as much control over the audio/video as they can. They have been depreciating the older code, and replacing it with code that is more tied to their system, and more DRM friendly.
Makes sense on the audio side with Zune.
Creative, seeing its mp3 player market and success be limited, might have ventured strongly in digital music production, I mean, something they did play around with in the mid-to-late-90's with the SoundBlaster AWE range, which gave you excellent hardware sounds and ability to load samples onto the card. Yet this push in the early to mid-2000's was decimated by powerful CPUs that create sounds and mangle samples purely in CPU (Reason, Logic, AbletonLive, GarageBand) and the solid *outboard* affordable hardware for music was so strongly dominated (and with good reason, from my personal experience) by M-Audio. ( http://www.m-audio.com ). M-Audio's continued level of product innovation and adoption by enthusiast, prosumer to high-level pros is staggering.
Almost a textbook failure, in the business history of Creative. Still, fair enough it's still a somewhat profitable company, offering jobs and carving out it's EAX and X-Fi niche.
For those who did put out some cash for Creative boards in their PCs, here are some links (AFAIK) as to Creative's remaining hopes for Vista, culled from the Creative Forums:
http://forums.creative.com/creativel...board.id=Vista
http://forums.creative.com/creativel...essage.id=5000
http://forums.creative.com/creativel...essage.id=3603
It seems as though MS has been attempting to take as much control over the audio/video as they can. They have been depreciating the older code, and replacing it with code that is more tied to their system, and more DRM friendly.
Luckily unless Microsoft starts making GPUs, nVidia and ATI and their OEMs have their asses covered, and all they gotta do is toe the line with DirectX10, and whatever is the smoothest pathway upwards, also with regard to "Physics" add-on cards, whose value is still somewhat questionable.
Microsoft can't touch the GPU makers yet, but they have been relentless in crushing OpenGL though - which sucks for Open Source and Mac Gaming.
In any case, nVidia and ATI/AMD are desperately (seriously, have you seen what a mammoth the nVidia 8-series is?) trying to get to 65nm and 45nm to deliver that high-res photorealistic graphics within some decent performance-per-wat-per-dollar envelopes.
Similarly with Creative on the home/enthusiast (but not Pro) audio side, nVidia and ATI can only go *so far* with delivering HDCP/ HDTV/ up to 1080p for media centers. In fact, they've already done this, and have hardware GPU decoding for near-flawless 1080p playback. Luckily the growth space for nVidia and ATI is richer, more immersive, fluid, high-res, more-and-more-photorealistic graphics for both PCs and 3rd gen/ 4th gen (??) consoles. Remember what our iLeader preached: something like only 26million game consoles sold in 2006, and almost 800million PCs. Take what you will from these stats (if I remember them correctly anyway) but GPU makers have got their growth plans fairly covered, seeing as Intel is focused on integrated stuff which is *nowhere* near nVidia and ATI's stuff. For now (
Luckily unless Microsoft starts making GPUs, nVidia and ATI and their OEMs have their asses covered, and all they gotta do is toe the line with DirectX10, and whatever is the smoothest pathway upwards, also with regard to "Physics" add-on cards, whose value is still somewhat questionable.
Microsoft can't touch the GPU makers yet, but they have been relentless in crushing OpenGL though - which sucks for Open Source and Mac Gaming.
In any case, nVidia and ATI/AMD are desperately (seriously, have you seen what a mammoth the nVidia 8-series is?) trying to get to 65nm and 45nm to deliver that high-res photorealistic graphics within some decent performance-per-wat-per-dollar envelopes.
Similarly with Creative on the home/enthusiast (but not Pro) audio side, nVidia and ATI can only go *so far* with delivering HDCP/ HDTV/ up to 1080p for media centers. In fact, they've already done this, and have hardware GPU decoding for near-flawless 1080p playback. Luckily the growth space for nVidia and ATI is richer, more immersive, fluid, high-res, more-and-more-photorealistic graphics for both PCs and 3rd gen/ 4th gen (??) consoles. Remember what our iLeader preached: something like only 26million game consoles sold in 2006, and almost 800million PCs. Take what you will from these stats (if I remember them correctly anyway) but GPU makers have got their growth plans fairly covered, seeing as Intel is focused on integrated stuff which is *nowhere* near nVidia and ATI's stuff. For now (
MS does control the GPU market by controlling the specs they have to design to. The gpu manufacturers must process the code MS provides. It's that simple. Even Intel has no choice there. As they bring more of this control in-house, third party hardware companies become more dependent on MS for them to sell more boards, just as the PC companies have become dependent on them for new machine sales, and software companies have, for upgrades.
Sadly, Creative's play for the pro music making market was the purchase of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mu which I think they totally frigged up. They could have taken those resources from E-mu to start making some decent offerings for the mid-end pro market (just below say DigiDesign and so-on), but from the turn of the century the space that E-mu was supposed to really deliver on got dominated by M-Audio. In any case Avid owns M-Audio and DigiDesign now, so, whatever E-mu really offered is all relegated to a few museum exhibits now.
The last expensive audio boards from Creative had generated little but criticism from the PC community. They didn't sell well.
As you say, onboard audio has become "good enough".
It's why a market for them never developed in Apple territory.
I have one of the very first stereo boards for my old 950. It recorded stereo as well as played it back.
After that, stereo was built-in, and the board market never had a chance to grow. We have had, and do have now, pro audio boards. But, that is a different market.
It's 26 million consoles and 206 million PCs, not 800 million as I mentioned.
The PC number is a bit low, but it's close.
The last expensive audio boards from Creative had generated little but criticism from the PC community. They didn't sell well.
As you say, onboard audio has become "good enough".
It's why a market for them never developed in Apple territory.
I have one of the very first stereo boards for my old 950. It recorded stereo as well as played it back.
After that, stereo was built-in, and the board market never had a chance to grow. We have had, and do have now, pro audio boards. But, that is a different market.
Just a few years ago the G4 machines' onboard audio was 16bit-44khz, which is why when I was producing with Reason/ Rewire/ AbletonLive I used M-Audio's outboard 2-in 4-out or something like that to get Reason to synth in the 24bit-48khz space (makes a BIG difference)...
Now I just went to Audio Midi Settings on my MacBook, and it's looking like the Intel mobo here can do 24bit-96khz
Just a few years ago the G4 machines' onboard audio was 16bit-44khz, which is why when I was producing with Reason/ Rewire/ AbletonLive I used M-Audio's outboard 2-in 4-out or something like that to get Reason to synth in the 24bit-48khz space (makes a BIG difference)...
Now I just went to Audio Midi Settings on my MacBook, and it's looking like the Intel mobo here can do 24bit-96khz
Yeah, but for most purposes that's overkill. There's no evidence that going that high gives an audible benefit. 20/48 is considered to be the last audible step. I agree.