Tag Archive for ‘MP3 Players’ at Walking Amongst Dark Shadows

Tag Archive for 'MP3 Players'

Creative Vs Daniel_K

Published

on April 2, 2008

. 1 Comment

Silence from Creative after customer revolt

Picture the following scenario. Imagine if you had gone out and purchased a Creative Labs Soundblaster of some kind, there’s loads of them around but the most popular ones would be their Audigy and XFI series cards. Now imagine smiling when you saw that ‘Vista Compatible’ logo on the box, meaning that the card would work on Microsoft Vista. So you purchase it, take it home and install it into your PC. You would then either:

Install the drivers from the included CD
OR simply get and install the latest drivers from the Creative website

You would now have a fully working card right? You should be able to use all its capabilities given that it is ‘Vista Compatible’. What would you do if you found out that it wasn’t really ‘Vista Compatible’ ? This is what thousands of creative soundcard owners have been asking themselves for years now. Creative’s soundcard drivers have always been laughably poor, even back when I used them on my Audigy 2 in Windows XP, but it turns out that their new XFI drivers are just as bad. There are no decent working drivers in Vista at present I am led to believe. Because the Creative ‘Soundblaster’ moniker is such a powerful one - your average joe public just assumes that the product adds high quality sound to your PC, and will then go out and purchase one without knowing all this.

A driver modder known as Daniel_K decided to come up with his own modified drivers that restored functionality to these cards - everyone was happy, well except for Creative. One would think that they’d embrace his skills and maybe hire him, but instead they decided to do him for copyright issues! Daniel_K was warned on the Creative forums to cease activity, and what then followed was a backlash that I have never seen before. The forums were filled with thousands of unhappy gamers/soundblaster owners ranting and mocking Creative for ignorance. For a corporate company as big as Creative, they should be able to afford driver engineers to develop the best drivers possible but no. Instead they just rehash and rebox card after card to make even more money - and it works.

Since Windows Vista arrived on the scene, driver vendors have struggled to come up with decent functionality with their drivers as they have to work with new API’s they aren’t used to. As I have stated in the past, Creative were one of those companies that ended up admitting that their Audigy 2 and XFI drivers were poor in the first place. Nebula Electronics who made the once extremely popular Nebula TV Tuners have all but gone silent on customers with regards to their Vista drivers since the release of the operating system in 2007. Despite it having the best TV software around, I have stopped using mine, and so has PR because they are just incomplete and flaky in Vista for well over a year now. Even their forums have dried up with no Nebula feedback.

Back to Creative though. I am a huge admirer of them and their products, well mainly their portable music and peripherals rather than their soundcards, which I have stated have always been top notch build and spec wise, but useless driver wise. They started the whole thing off, they brought music to the very early PC’s, just simple beeps from a soundchip embedded on a bit of PCB back in early 1987. It all went pear shaped as they branched out and kept rehashing soundcards to keep a foothold on the market. However the tide has changed, and they are suffering.

Built in sound capabilities on PC motherboards have already reached the point where they require little system resources and sound superb. Other soundcard manufacturers have been rising over the past year and are building far superior products. Auzentech, Asus, Razer to name a few, and they all work fine in Vista. There is no doubt that Creative are about to feel a backlash that they’re not used to. Lately they have failed to deliver a good sucessor to the Creative Zen Vision:M - their once flagship audio player. They have now seemingly focused on developing peripherals for the Apple iPod - their very own competitors. If this wasn’t enough to be concerned about, I would also be concerned about this, not that it means much to the company as a whole.

Yesterday, Creative via one of their forum moderators stated that they have listened to the feedback (feedback? you sure?) and decided to work with Daniel_K in supporting their driver development programme. Is this a case of way too little, too late? To be truthful, I hope he tells them to shove it. I truly respect, and admire what you’ve done Mr.K. I gave up on Creative cards a long time ago and have never had an XFI so I have no idea how bad it’s drivers were, but poor Creative drivers was why I went out and bought an Auzentech Meridian, a truly awesome bit of kit. Good luck with Creative.

You can read Daniel_K’s full story Here.
Full Creative/Daniel_K story Here.

Creative - Where do they go from here?

Published

Darren/Kain

on September 23, 2007

in Technology

. 4 Comments

Good things come to those who wait

I have had quite a few emails over the past week mostly asking where Creative’s answer to the new iPod’s are. Truth be told, there isn’t one - yet.

On August 30th 2007, Creative leaked out images of their next generation replacement for their flagship MP3/Video player - the Zen Vision:M. The new Creative Zen was a flash based player coming in three capacities of 4, 8 and 16GB. The player was almost identical to the ZVM, aside from having SD storage expansion, a superior screen and er, well that’s all sadly. For most users it was a downgrade because Creative, like most MP3 manufacturer’s seemed to be following the trend in moving away from hard disk based players onto Flash based players, which are cheaper to manufacture and more reliable.

The ZVM was one of the best DAP’s (Digial Audio Players) to come out of the portable music industry. In terms of sales it never could match the iPod, but specification wise it was a lot superior and for those owners who had one, they knew how powerful it was within minutes of using the player. It offered heaps of features, was solid and robust albeit a bit of a fatty. It could play almost any video format you could throw at it and it’s screen was far superior over the iPod and the rest of the competition.

September 5th 20076 saw Apple release their ‘new’ iPod range, with the main focus being on the lovely, sleek flash based iPod Touch. This device, whilst inferior to the ZVM feature wise, was enough to even grab my attention and I have one pre-ordered to arrive early October 2007, look out for a review. Creative have no answer to the iPod range, and at the IFA convention where all the Creative fans were hoping to see a new next generation player were left unimpressed by the Zen - hardly an impressive upgrade over the ZVM. Zen fans began to look elsewhere for a next generation player, as did I.

The industry is moving away from hard disk based players, and sales wise it has been clearly shown that flash players are selling much faster. The iPod Nano outsells it’s bigger iPod brothers, whilst Creative’s range of flash players are more popular than their hard disk based models. Apple customers have a good range of models at their disposal, while Creative have let their fans down by offering nothing but a smaller capacity ZVM. From a sales point of view you can’t blame Creative for ditching their support for hard disk based players. Apple can afford to take that risk because their products sell themselves through hype and advertising, the latter of which Creative have been rather slack on.

Where to now?

So Creative’s showing at the IFA was a disappointment and they’ve let down their fans somewhat. Most including yours truly were expecting an X-FI based player but instead we ended up losing our larger hard disk capacity to a flash based product.

The chaps at Tech.co.uk spoke to Alan Devine, Creative’s brand specialist after the IFA convention and he had this to say about Creative’s future. "We’re here today to talk specifically about the newly-announced Creative Zen," he said. "But yes we do have some spectacular new products in the early stages of development in Singapore. The Creative Zen will be our flagship player for the next couple of months at least."

On Creative adding XFI technology to their players, he had this to say. "It’s something we’re actively working on," he said. "The trouble is that the technology is so good that it’s quite battery-intensive, so wouldn’t currently work well in a portable device. There’s nothing arriving in the short term but we are working hard to try and get X-Fi into a player."

As to weather we can expect any more products from them in future, he had this to say. "We have a range of products coming out over the next year. We’ve done well in the entry level with the Zen Stone; the Creative Zen fits nicely mid-market. That leaves a pretty obvious area of the market for us to fill, and I can’t say more than that."

This is certainly good news indeed and proves that Creative haven’t given up on the DAP market yet, they’re branching out making different products, which includes third party devices for the Ipod range as well as their own. They have so far replaced the ZVM with the new Zen, but have yet to see a replacement for their Zen Vision:W - the widescreen version of their ZVM. So Creative will be announcing new players in future, but will they have the storage music enthusiasts really require? We haven’t seen the last of Creative that’s for sure.

Bioshock, Pizza’s, and iTunes

Published

Darren/Kain

on September 9, 2007

in Babble, Technology and Xbox 360

. 8 Comments

Would you kindly bend over…

It’s been a hectic weekend! I wasted money, and then some. Oh, there’s a Bioshock review that has been added to the reviews section. Not the best I might add, but I had to let loose my opinions on such a heavily rated game, especially after seeing it’s rating on Metacritic.com.

After finishing work on Friday, I was in a spending mood. I had about £350 saved up to blow on either clothes, pc/console bits, a low end DSLR Camera or a new MP3 player. The past week saw the release of the next generation of MP3/Video devices from the likes of Creative, Apple, Cowon, Microsoft, Archos and a few other manufacturers. I was already looking for a replacement for my Vision:M despite it being regarded as the best MP3 player on the market. I’ve had the thing for ages now and would like something a bit thinner - an excuse I recently used for buying a new mobile phone, the Sony Ericsson w880i.

Some things not to admit to on Irc…

Published

Darren/Kain

on September 5, 2007

in Music/TV/Films, Technology and WTF?

. 7 Comments

What are your worst tunes on your MP3 player?

Today was the launch of the new Apple iPod range over in the states. Needless to say there were good and bad products shown here, the highlight being the iPod Touch thing, which I’m sure people will quickly snap up only to realise that touchscreen’s aren’t too COOL in use. The iPod Touch doesn’t have that much storage space either, well for some people anyway. For those who require over 16GB of space for their albums, they’ll have to carefully manage what goes onto their new iPod. Anyway, over on our quakenet channel where most of us old-school gamers chat and complain about life in general, PR was getting rather amped up about the new iPod despite stating he wasn’t wanting one.

An hour later after the Apple announcement ended, he’s started pruning away at his iPod music collection… So what follows are various snippets cut out of the channel, because some of the tracks PR has puts my collection to shame!. Let the shaming begin!

[21:26] * PR|PC prunes music collection
[21:28] <PR|PC> Call of Duty 1 soundtrack
[21:28] <Kainz> lol
[21:28] <PR|PC> keeping that
[21:28] <PR|PC> back in the day when they had real orchestras playing real music
[21:31] <PR|PC> 2 Faced by Louise (pre redknapp)
[21:32] <Kainz> LOL
[21:33] <PR|PC> shup!
[21:34] <Kainz> Louise lol
[21:34] <PR|PC> Lighthouse family!
[21:35] <Kainz> Better then Louise!
[21:35] <PR|PC> She’s hot!
[21:35] <Kainz> and now married!
[21:35] <Kainz> Ya got J-LO!?
[21:38] <PR|PC> Fahrenheit Soundtrack
[21:39] <PR|PC> Hang it Up!
[21:39] <Kainz> Teh what
[21:39] <PR|PC> When you play basketball with the cop!
[21:39] <Kainz> lol
[21:49] <PR|PC> Samantha Mumba!
[21:49] <Kainz> lmao
[21:49] <Kainz> and you have the balls to take the piss out of me for my taste!
[21:50] <Kainz> So what iplod bloat are you buying?
[21:50] <PR|PC> Who said I’m buying it?!
[21:50] <PR|PC> Tempted I must say
[21:50] <Kainz> You’re pruning e.g prepping your music collection!
[21:51] <PR|PC> Deleting Sam Mumba is hardly pruning!
[21:51] <Kainz> What about louise!
[21:51] <PR|PC> Gone

The New Creative Zen! [Update]

Published

Darren/Kain

on August 30, 2007

in Technology

. 10 Comments

iWant!!

This is the replacement for the Creative Vision:M, considered as the best MP3 player on the market. Recently Creative have stated that the Vision:M is an EoL (End of the line) product so a replacement for their top of the range player is more or less due and boy have they surprised Zen fans with their latest effort.

Yesterday, Creative leaked out photo’s of their new Zen, a super-slim flash based player, which arrives in 4, 8, and 16GB capacities, as well as having a high quality 2.6" display and an SD card expansion slot. If memory serves me correctly it is the first 16GB flash player to hit the market too. People could say that 16GB isn’t enough and a hard disk, which the Vision:M has is a better feature. While I’d agree with that, you have to admit that RAM prices are falling through the floor and if 16GB isn’t enough, then a simple SD card upgrade should suffice. At the end of the day, flash ram is always the best solution, even though it has been expensive in the past. For that reason alone I will be after it and doing an in-depth review!
Continue reading ‘The New Creative Zen! [Update]‘

Creative Zen Vision:M Reviewed

Published

Darren/Kain

on September 3, 2006

in Technology

. 1 Comment

I’ve written a review on my latest MP3 player, the Zen Vision:M and added it to the Reviews page, which has been long overdue for some content. Enjoy!

Creative Zen Vision:M

Published

Darren/Kain

on August 16, 2006

in Technology

. 8 Comments

My new baby!

I’ve been after the Creative Zen Vision:M MP3/Video player for a long time now, to replace my aging iRiver 6gb H10. Last week I saw them going cheap for £180 on Play so I jumped at the chance. The player arrived yesterday much to my excitement and just as the reviews have stated, this thing is THE nicest and arguably the best player on the market due to it’s wealth of features.

I was shocked at the size of the thing at first, it’s much larger, thicker and heavier then my H10 but that display and its 262k colour palette means that the video display is so vibrant in comparison to the iPod Video

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