October 2002 to December 2002

News Update
December 31, 2002

CNET News has an article on AOpen's questionable move to introduce sound cards with vacuum tubes. More interesting is the fact that the Sound Blaster's market share is dwindling. Check out these excerpts:

The standalone audio card market was considerably stronger in the mid-1990s, when companies like Creative Labs, with its Sound Blaster audio card, first helped PCs become multimedia machines. But in 1997, technology for integrating audio directly into a computer's motherboard became widespread, and the standalone audio market soon collapsed. The ability to do signal-processing functions inside software programs--once the exclusive purview of hardware--also helped undermine audio card sales.

Most PCs today are sold with integrated audio capabilities that let listeners play music, if not with particularly high-quality sound, without any specialized hardware. Creative's Audigy and Sound Blaster lines of audio cards still sell fairly well among game players and music lovers looking for a richer sound, but the company continues to have only a fraction of the market it commanded half a decade ago, McCarron said.

On another note, the Audigy 2 wins The Inquirer's best consumer sound award for 2002, with the nForce 2's integrated audio solution nipping at its heels at second place.

MP3 Worms
December 20, 2002

Big in the news is the revelation of a security vulnerability triggered by simply hovering your mouse over a MP3 file in Windows XP! Also, Winamp is also vulnerable to files designed to exploit it. Nullsoft doesn't publicize this flaw in their web site. Nevertheless, the latest versions fix this problem, so it good to download the latest version. Be sure to download the latest update if you are using Windows XP! More: Wired News

Driver Issues
December 18, 2002

The Inquirer posted an article on Creative's driver policy. It states that the Live!Ware program is discontinued. Live!Ware has been discontinued for ages, so I'm not sure this constitutes "news," but still its nice to get something official. Creative also explains that drivers were only available on CDs because non-broadband users have to take hours to download them. More in the drivers section.

For those of you still hanging on to your old Sound Blaster PCI cards based on Ensoniq chips, Creative posted a new driver package on 13th December. Here's a download link on Creative's Asia server.

Site Updates
December 16, 2002

We received news from Utopia Sound Division that they are having a special Christmas offer. Just $25 for Utopia Live! 2.0 and the Acoustic Piano add-on v1.0! Also, we've included the whole scoop about a new product dubbed 'Project-Portability' in the Utopia Live! review.

Steven Odden sends us links to his music. Piano Sonatas at StevenOdden uses a SoundFont piano, while all the music at StrangeCat uses SoundFonts.

Audigy and Audigy 2 with Pentium 4 HyperThreading CPUs
December 3, 2002 (Source: Live!center)

A parallel of the early multiprocessing (SMP) bugs with the Live! driver is back. With the Intel Pentium 4 3.06 GHz CPU and a compatible motherboard, you can enable HyperThreading (HT) to allow the OS to use the CPU like it was two separate CPUs. Similar to SMP systems with two physical CPUs, benchmarks of HT have shown that this is very beneficial for users who multitask and run may programs simultaneously. However, the Audigy and Audigy 2 drivers are exhibiting similar symptoms as the early Live! drivers for Windows 2000, including stuttering and audio glitches. More: Warp2Search | Ace's Hardware

Site Outage
December 3, 2002

You may have noticed that the site has not been updated for the last couple of weeks, and suddenly went out for the past 10 days. This was caused by a misconfiguration of the servers by our sponsors at SingNet, but we're glad that the problem has been rectified. Thanks to everyone at SingNet for the assistance.

MediaSource Patches
November 27, 2002

Creative released two patches for the MediaSource applications bundled with the Audigy 2. The patches solve different problems: one is the failure to recognize double-byte character sets used by Windows for some languages, and the other solves a bug where the MediaSource Go launcher fails to launch shortcuts. More: Creative Asia (you may need to search around the site if Creative modifies this page)

Interesting Stuff
November 24, 2002

The Sound Blaster web site is updated with an interview with the lead audio programmer of Hitman 2: Silent Assassin. Also, Creative is plugging the DVD-Audio capabilities of the Audigy 2 with a primer and some disc highlights.

Check out this enlightening The Register article titled "All CDs will be protected and you are a filthy pirate," and find out just how record companies are planning to (mis)use DRM.

Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Launch
September 29, 2002

We were there when the Audigy 2 was launched in Singapore. Check out our report of the event, including a closeup of the Inspire 6.1 6600 box, the new Cambridge SoundWorks MegaWorks THX 550, and early information on the Platinum eX and the Extigy 2. Read the article

Nomad Jukebox Zen
September 28, 2002

Creative previewed their answer to the Apple iPod during the launch of Windows Media 9 (read the press release). It looks pretty cool, and we found some information at these Japanese sites: I-O DATA and ZDNet Japan. Creative will be pricing these lower than the iPod and expect them at your local stores very soon.

Creative SLiX
September 24, 2002

If you read The Register's article on the Audigy 2, there is mention of a PC from Creative called SLiX. Indeed there is! It talks about being whisper quiet, and all that, but it is actually a mini barebones PC kit. In fact, it is so similar to the Shuttle SS51G, that I would conclude that the SLiX is OEM'd from them (only that the box and branding have changed).

Bloomberg jumped the gun and announced that Creative is launching this product, which prompted Creative to issue a press release refuting the report, on the same day the Audigy 2 was announced. Creative is only testing the SLiX in certain markets, like its homeground in Singapore, where the SLiX is already being retailed in many computer stores.

Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Launched!
September 23, 2002

Creative introduces the next evolution in PC audio, the Sound Blaster Audigy 2. Check out the product information available on the Sound Blaster web site, the Creative Asia site, and read the Asia Press Release.

We attended the press launch today and will have exclusive pictures and information for you. Check back soon!