Practically every computer geek/nerd of the 80s and 90s has come across and used a Sound Blaster at some point. Part of our childhoods, as the saying goes.<p>RIP, not many get to affect quite as many people as Creative did across entire generations.
Known in the US as Creative Labs.<p>Mercy, those Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live PCI cards (CT4830) were like the default go-to option for everyone for years & years. Every system build got one! They were reasonably priced & considered pretty decent! Motherboards had pretty bad onboard sound if any at all, up until an Nvidia chipset started sometimes having some good implementations (the nForce chipset with integrated SoundStorm, the same DSP-based chipset as on the Xbox, and boasting a very rare Dolby Digital 5.1 encoding capability), so in went a Live! (Value) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Blaster_Live" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Blaster_Live</a>!<p>I kept my computers in closets & ran extended HDMI & USB extension cable runs to workstations for about a decade, and the Creative Labs X-Fi Surround 5.1 Pro (SB1090) and latter X-Fi HD (SB1095) were my go to card for a long long time. Again, cheap-enough, and acceptable DACs.
a full year before the iPod, I remember getting the Creative Nomad Jukebox (<a href="https://www.iretron.com/blog/posts/technology-flashback-creative-nomad-jukebox-2000/" rel="nofollow">https://www.iretron.com/blog/posts/technology-flashback-crea...</a>) with its whopping 6GB of space and showing it off at school. it had a great display and the icons on the physical buttons were worn off from me pressing them.<p>more importantly as a kid from a tiny country, Mr. Sim and Creative Technologies showed promise that you could make an impact in the global tech scene and become a billionaire without being in real estate or oil or some other calcified industry. thank you and RIP.
Funny that my Dad and I bought the Creative Game blaster from a Singapore market (likely Sim Lim) and bought that back to South Africa. It was a revelation to play Sierra games sound through it.<p>Decades later I now live in Singapore. =)
Creative Labs also made one of the strangest keyboard keyboard (not a typo) contraptions, the Prodikeys[0]<p>[0] <a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Creative+Labs+ProdiKeys&t=h_&iax=images&ia=images" rel="nofollow">https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Creative+Labs+ProdiKeys&t=h_&iax=i...</a>
Wow. I will always remember when I got the AWE32. I had a SB16 which was still great before that. I switched to the AWE32, and remember fighting with my computer get any audio going at all, and wanting to play Day of the Tentacle [1] with this new upgraded magic. After messing around with config.sys and autoexec.bat for hours thinking this was some kind of IRQ "LOTR issue I would defeat", I found my speaker to be just not plugged in correctly. Fixed that in shame. I then started to play DOTT in AWE.<p>One of my best memories growing up. RIP.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BRXmgcBHBM">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BRXmgcBHBM</a>
Best known for their sound solutions, Creative even made graphics cards in the early 2000s. The Creative GeForce 2 Ultra, with its bright green RAM heatsinks! What a tasteful looking (and performing) card that was.
Creative Technology shares jumped[0] by 25% after the news. Can anybody share more on the reasoning? Was he being seen as a founder who was holding the company back?<p>[0]: <a href="https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/creative-sim-wong-hoo-shares-spike-death-stocks-3184436?cid=internal_sharetool_androidphone_05012023_cna" rel="nofollow">https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/creative-sim-wong-h...</a>
I remember Creative as the company that killed Adlib, by making sure Yamaha wouldn't ship its new OPL3 chip until Creative would be ready with its sound card too.<p>No question that the guy was a talented and ruthless businessman, but I will not shed a tear for him.
I've rather used the Gravis Ultrasound Max, the better variant of the simple soundblasters, which had hardware soundtables then, patchsets, and Doom support.<p>I've created a lot of Doom VR those times with this card. Good old cheap VR times
What kind of obituary is this? Ending in a stock exchange report "As at 9.09am, shares in Creative Technology are trading 9 cents higher or 6.38% up at $1.50" Tasteless.
I remember changing from my motherboard's onboard sound to a Creative Audigy 4. Wow. It was like going from 200/200 vision to 20/20 overnight. The clarity was amazing.
I will remember Creative as the company that purchased two of the greatest music synthesizer companies, E-Mu and Ensoniq, merged them, and then destroyed them.
One of very few Singaporean semi companies which made it.<p>The only one I would list second to it would be Espressif, which makes ESP8266 and ESP32.<p>I lived in Singapore as a student 2007-2009.