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http://www.macnn.com/articles/01/03/20/creative.prepares/

Creative prepares for Mac SoundBlaster Live!

updated 06:40 pm EST, Tue March 20, 2001

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Creative Labs, after yesterday announcing cost-cutting measures that include a 10 percent reduction in its workforce and the closure of its U.S. manufacturing plant, has confirmed with MacNN today that the company still plans to ship the highly anticipated SoundBlaster Live! sound card for the Mac. "In fact, we're very close to shipping the product," said Creative PR Manager Phil O'Shaughnessy.

by MacNN Staff

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03/20, 07:09pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
low end?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't soundblaster live! one of the lower end sound cards from creative labs?

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03/20, 07:28pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
No it's their flagship.

The SB 16 and Ensoniq branded cards are their low end.
The Live! line is their cream of the crop.

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03/20, 07:28pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
I am close too

I am close to winning the Powerball lottery. I have gotten a few numbers on several occasions, its just a matter of strategy and focus before I win the jackpot.

Is this card EVER going to ship? I saw an ad for it in some random Mac catalog (we get so many every week or so, cant remember which). Mac OS X is actually shipping BEFORE this card, egads!

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03/20, 07:35pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Read the PR

"Creative's popular line of Sound Blaster� Live! audio solutions and Personal Digital Entertainment (PDE) Internet Solutions - which include the NOMAD line of portable audio devices and the WebCam Go line of portable PC cameras - will be the first in a series of products from Creative to support the Mac. Creative will demonstrate these products at the upcoming Macworld Expo, January 5 -8, in San Francisco, CA, at the Moscone Convention Center in Booth 2339. "

This PR was released on Dec 20, 1999! I'll believe it when I see it.

http://www.americas.creative.com/pressroom/releases/1999/p991220.html

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03/20, 07:59pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Whatever

They promised this card to be available at MWSF, now for the past three months it's going to be "ready any day". If this is a sign of things to come, I can only imagine the frequency of driver updates and support for OS X. That's right, the first version of the card will not even be OS X compatible, I heard that straight from Creative Labs. Pathetic.

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03/20, 09:05pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
I'll bet...

I was interested in this thing LAST YEAR at NY MacWorld!

I mean, is it THAT HARD for a company that specializes in digital audio for PC's to make a Mac-compatible card?!? I know it's not something they could pop out in a few weeks, but c'mon already...

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03/20, 09:45pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
They suck

These morons aren't your friends. They're gonna release a half-assed product without OS X support and then never update it. In a few years after all other apps have migrated to OS X you'll be stuck booting into 9 just so you can hear system beeps on this crummy card from a PC oriented company and dream about what could have been.

Don't buy it until they have a working OS X product!

All your sack of dung PC audio card vendors are belong to Gates!

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03/20, 09:59pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
It's not all their fault

While I do agree that they're been promising this thing way too far in advance... there are some large technical issues in the current MacOS that make supporting a soundcard difficult. There are parts of MacOS which weren't really designed to route audio to a different processor, and these pieces are up to Apple to fix.

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03/20, 10:56pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
OS 8&9 vs. OS X support

You can't expect any company selling hardware for the Mac market to rely solely on OS X. MacOS 8.x and 9.x are going to be on the majority of Macs for years to come. Simply shipping OS X drivers won't cut it--you need MacOS 8&9 drivers (which are very different from OS X drivers) too. I doubt the card has to change at all for OS X--there's no reason it should. It's just a question of writing new software to drive the thing. Lighten up guys. At least they're doing Mac development.

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03/20, 11:15pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
OS X Drivers

It's fine to stomp and complain, but that fact is that Apple hasn't provided most driver developers with enough useable information to actually develop OS X drivers yet. Apple itself isn't expecting to see third party drivers until at least the July timeframe when the second OS X launch occurs. You simply cannot develop drivers for an operating system without a useable driver development kit. As I recall, Apple promised that at least a year ago.

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03/20, 11:50pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Drivers...

Stop your waiting, because these idiots can't even make decent drivers for the PC! A friend of mine got a Live! Gamer card, and we've spent several MONTHS trying to get the drivers to install without it causing crashes on boot. We still haven't gotten it going, and there's many a folk who've had the same problem. And where's creative with a fix???? Beat's me, since they haven't updated the drivers for it since last may, and they seem either clueless as to the cause, or too incompetent to fix it. One poster had it right. They'll put out half-assed drivers and offer no further support.

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03/21, 01:33am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Cream of the crop...

The SoundBlaster Live product is last year's cream of the crop. This year's flagship line for the PC is the Live 5.1 series.

So let's look a little closer:

Live = Last year's PC Technology coming to a Mac near you... SOON, REALLY REALLY SOON! WE PROMISE!!!!!

Live 5.1 = Sorry, that's for PC users. Mac people don't need that!

Price of Live for Mac: More than the comparable Live 5.1 for the PC! Last year's technology at above this year's prices!

Creative, wake up. We're intelligent consumers. Try treating us as such.

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03/21, 09:12am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Hey, let's wait and see.

First of all, it sounds like a lot of you have NO clue about how hard it is to develop hardware, and then the software to support it.
This is Creative's first major effort that I know of to develop a sound card that will work with the Classic MacOS. Knowing how a lot of us Mac users (including myself) have the tendency to b**** when a product comes out and doesn't work right, isn't it better that Creative makes it work as well as possible before releasing it, as opposed to doing it in Mickey-Mouse fashion and releasing a card to get it out there quick, but with buggy drivers they promise to patch later? I've already seen a forum full of people this morning ticked off because the new Apple/NVidia Geforce2 MX update isn't working on their systems, so I know how most of us would react to that. Because of the way a Macintosh works, most of us Apple users expect something to "work right, and work right the first time, damn it!" I think Creative is right on the mark, as they delayed their card because of Sound Manager problems they wanted to make sure they fix.
As for OS X compatibility, I don't expect it to be right away, but I think it will come along quicker than Classic, because I'm sure there's already FreeBSD drivers out there for the SBLive! and all they need is some minor work to port them over. Someone who probably knows BSD UNIX could probably say better than myself, but coding those out shouldn't be the bear that doing it for the Classic MacOS environment is. As for the person who previously bitched about PC audio card vendors on the first page, I personally think that anyone who wishes to stifle the efforts of those who develop hardware for the Mac (simply because they're already making PC products) should take one of these sound cards and stick it where the sun doesn't shine. We should be promoting this. The more vendors that see this as worthwhile, the further Apple continues to expand, the better its market share. `Nuff said.

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03/21, 10:44am | report spam | close Reply | delete
a related note

Not to say you all don't have a reason to complain, but lets take another point of view.
DVD - one would think support for this technology would be a no-brainer correct?
Well, Creative Labs flagship here, the DVD-Encore with Dxr3 technology has been around for a year or two now. I own the 12x DVD-Encore with Dxr3. yes, this product is supported under Windows 98 and 95. NO, this product is NOT supported under Windows ME (although it may work using the 98 software) and NO this product is NOT supported under Windows 2000 (my main PC OS) at all. They do have beta software (release last November I believe) but it does not work (picture comes in as digital snow, sound occationally works). On the other hand the 5x DVD-Encore with Dxr2 released 2-3 years ago IS supported under Windows 2000.

Strange huh? Maybe there really is a lot more to developing software for this stuff than we thought, and the complexity of the latest and greatest hardware makes it even more difficult. Give these guys some credit, maybe they realize releasing a half-assed attempt won't succeed and so they are working to make the product FULLY compatible (and who knows, MAYBE they are also working on the features of the new 5.1 series at the same time, so as to release the latest-greatest and have it actually WORK.

Seriously, how much do you all KNOW of how the mac handles audio. Case in point: the hardware-based DVD Macs using USB speakers...it is *impossible* (according to Apple) to play DVDs and route the sound through the USB speakers. Don't you think it would be easier to implement a software/digital routing solution than to route sound to a totally different hardware component? Without extreme cooperation from Apple, Creative Labs has a HUGE task, have patience (even if it does take another year).

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Creative prepares for Mac SoundBlaster Live!

updated 06:40 pm EST, Tue March 20, 2001

low end?

No it's their flagship.

I am close too

Read the PR

Whatever

I'll bet...

They suck

It's not all their fault

OS 8&9 vs. OS X support

OS X Drivers

Drivers...

Cream of the crop...

Hey, let's wait and see.

a related note

Login Here

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Creative prepares for Mac SoundBlaster Live!

updated 06:40 pm EST, Tue March 20, 2001

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low end?

No it's their flagship.

I am close too

Read the PR

Whatever

I'll bet...

They suck

It's not all their fault

OS 8&9 vs. OS X support

OS X Drivers

Drivers...

Cream of the crop...

Hey, let's wait and see.

a related note

Login Here

Register for our weekly email newsletter:

Connect tools:

Subscribe

to our RSS

Follow us

on Twitter

Most Read

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