An occasional pop in the midst of silence, a little crackle while watching a movie — these are features that I did not order with my X-Fi Platinum Fatal1ty Champion sound card back in 2008. Creative drivers are appalling and the company is starting to gain notoriety on the internet as just another large company who does not care about its customers. They consistently ignore plees to improve their drivers and blocks enthusiasts from creating improved versions. The driver is broken, please fix it.
Daniel_K, a user on the Creative Forum, is a lone philanthropist who edits the drivers to enable hardware features that Creative Labs that have intentionally crippled. I am about to install Daniel’s support pack and his updated driver from August (after observing the multitude of positive reviews):
- SB X-Fi Series Support Pack 2.0 (2009-05-15)
- SB X-Fi Series driver 2.20.0001 - Forte v1.1 (2009-08-06)
Creative do not like Daniel providing its customers with working drivers. Wired investigated and questioned Creative directly:
O’Shaughnessy admits that Creative Labs intentionally crippled its Vista drivers as a business strategy.
My next sound card will not be Creative. The Asus Xonar D2 Sound Card is a viable alternative at a much lower price (half of my Champion Edition) with brilliant reviews all over the internet. Next time I purchase hardware I will ensure customers are satisfied.
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