New creative labs drivers coming soon!

[Mister Frag 0]

From http://www.warp2search.net/article....order=0

News: Creative Announces New Live! & Audigy Drivers!

=>Posted by: Rancho*.

=>Thursday, July 04 @ 226:34 CEST

David Hamilton, Creative Labs UK, has posted in the official CL UK forums about the long awaited upcoming new drivers for the two most successful series of Soundcards. From what you can gather out of his post the new Live! drivers can be expected in a one to two weeks time frame. The Audigy drivers are to be released in August. However you can order the new installation CD for a small shipping fee right now. Also note that this new release seems to be equivalent to the drivers Compaq released in May 2002.

Read more...

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Sound Blaster Audigy - for Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP only

Sound Blaster Live - for Windows 98/98SE/ME/2000/XP only

WDM Driver Version (ctaud2k.sys): 5.12.01.0244

Included applications:

Creative AudioHQ v1.10.21

Creative Device Control

SoundFont Control

EAX Control

Keyboard

Speaker Configuration

Creative Windows Diagnostic v2.00.16

Creative MiniDisc Center v1.01.14

Creative PlayCenter v3.01.57

Creative Recorder v2.00.24

Creative Surround Mixer v2.00.26

Creative TaskBar v1.00.26

Creative WaveStudio v4.21.07

Creative Remote Center v1.40.21 (Only applies to Platinum and Platinum eX users)

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We have been working for some time now on a unified driver architecture base to allow us to better support our customers needs on a more timely basis. The unified driver architecture drivers will be know as the Creative MDP (Multi-Driver Pack) and will eradicate future issues that occur between drivers and applications running on different OS's and will also support both Live! and Audigy series cards under the one driver. The key benefit of the MDP approach is that there is now only one driver and app codebase as opposed to the multiple codebases that existed previously and had to be maintained separately. This will free up development time from a majority of maintenance to a much fairer balance of more enhancement development.

As you can appreciate this meant starting from the ground up and building the drivers and apps all over again from scratch. This work has taken a great deal of time, but we have recently completed the stand-alone driver and apps that are now used on our new installation CDs, which some OEMs now have and our newer products will also use.

We are very aware of some outstanding issues with the Live! and Audigy based cards that have been highlighted by many users and we very much appreciate your patience while waiting for the fixes to these issues. We had a very tough choice to make. Did we work on a fix using the old codebases, but in doing so delay the release of the MDP which has so many other benefits, or build the fixes into the MDP and release the two together a little later? We decided the best approach was to forge ahead with the new architecture which will provide better long-term advantages.

The great news is that these issues are indeed resolved using the new MDP approach and all that remains to be done is release a web download. Unfortunately as in all things in life this is not a simple process. Due to the vast difference in code between the old system and the new and also between the Live! codebase and the Audigy there is a further great deal of work to be done. Why? Well it's simple. The full install is over 300MB, clearly too big for anyone but T1 users to download in a reasonable timeframe, therefore we have to create update packs whcih are much smaller because they update only the parts that require changing. However due to the previous different codebases we have to create two different upgrade streams, one for Live! and one for Audigy. Once installed they will both then be 100% MDP compliant. We took the decision a little while ago to release the Live! update first. This work is now 99% complete and the download (only 50MB if you want all components, 25MB for the core components) will be available in the next week or so on our site. The work has already begun on the Audigy download and barring any major issues this should be ready around late August time.

In the meantime if you are a Live! user on a modem that doesn't want to download 50MB, or if you are an Audigy user that does not want to wait for the download, we have made the full CD available for order. The CD is free of charge, but there is a very small fee of €1.50 to cover postage. Once both downloads are available we will implement a small handling charge for the CD shipment, so if you want it - get it now.

One final point is that in the past when we have released large downloads our servers have become jammed and many users have complained about dropped downloads or simply just incredibly slow download speeds. Due to the size of this download we anticipated the same flurry of activity. We have therefore listened to our users and we are investigating many options. from the simple one of adding more bandwidth, to server bandwidth sharing between our WW servers (i.e. when the U.S. is asleep Europe can use some of their bandwidth to supplement ours and vice-versa) etc, etc. However one enhancement that has already been implemented and will be used going forwards will be our implementation of a new download queueing system that allows us to provide maximum service fairly across our user base. During busy periods you may have a few minutes wait before your download begins, but once it does you will be given guranteed bandwidth at a minimum 56K modem speed. Should your connection be dropped, no problem. Log back in within 5 mins and you go straight back into the download without queueing. Our servers also support resume download apps, so if you have these you will even be able to continue the download from the point it left off.

We are very pleased with the performance and stability of our new driver set and we are sure you will be too. I hope you like the plans we have put in place and have a better understanding of the implementation issues encountered.

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[Placebo 28]

Yay

[Kep Kelagin 1]

Good news

[Placebo 28]

So these leaked ones here they new? Anyways trying them now

[KKB 0]

I bought my SB LIVE in May 2000, and it took CL only 2 years to deliver a working driver (OK, nobody knows by now if it will fix anything *g*)

I must say OUTSTANDING JOB!!!

[Gamer 10]

Do yourselves a favor and get your money back on that POS Audigy...

Get yourselves a Hercules and you will have no more problems

Creative do not give a toss about their customers and That David dude will promise you the world but the delivery will take some time.... yada yada yada....

Boycott Creative is my opinion

Its your money, you have the power to say no

[Placebo 28]

LOL yeah Creative aren't exactly overwhelming with their driver releases are they

Although I have a Hercules 4500 Kyro2 and they aren't very freqeuent with their driver releases either, seems to be one every 3 months or so which isn't great

[Guest]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (LtCol_Gamer_#DK# @ July 05 2002,23:58)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Do yourselves a favor and get your money back on that POS Audigy...

Get yourselves a Hercules and you will have no more problems

Creative do not give a toss about their customers and That David dude will promise you the world but the delivery will take some time.... yada yada yada....

Boycott Creative is my opinion

Its your money, you have the power to say no<span id='postcolor'>

The thing is with Creative is that they make excellent hardware but incredibly shitty software. I must say that during my long experience with computers I have never seen anything as bad as the Creative Soundblaster Live 5.1 software suite.

[Mister Frag 0]

I'm not sure about the drivers referenced on EntCity, I'm unable to get to the server.

However, the driver version number mentioned in the original story is the same one as that found in the Creative Labs drivers set on Compaq's FTP site -- I've been using those drivers for quite a while now under Windows XP, and they work fine with full hardware acceleration and EAX support, and without the loud foosteps bug:

Since it is entirely possible that they have made code changes without updating the version resource, I will still download the drivers once they are made available by Creative Labs.

[KKB 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (placebo @ July 06 2002,01)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">LOL yeah Creative aren't exactly overwhelming with their driver releases are they <!--emo&<span id='postcolor'>

Yeah. What I don't get is this, why aren't the same guys who actually build the thing not able to program it properly... even worse, by updating drivers once every year it appears as if they don't even try.

As opposite to NVidia, they update their drivers almost too often (if you count the "leaked" (read public betatest   ) versions)

Oh well, download of the 370MB monster is finnished, lets hope the crackling is gone. Using hardware EAX without CTD is a thing I haven't even dreamed of, wish me luck, hehe  

EDIT:

YES! I played throu 'Ambush' without a single crackling noise (it was reproducable for me in that mission) and with Hardware acceleration and EAX enabled, no problems enountered

[LBGS_Stewart 0]

thats whats nice about ATI they update there drivers every mounth. but it is funny on the Creatives driver download page "check back often we are always updating drivers" or something very similar to that.

[Placebo 28]

I was playing Opf:R MP a while back and there was crackle with the Jeep with machine gun

[kennethc 0]

Here is the reply from creative when i enquired about them.

It is singapore where the Major R&D is ... then again i may be mistaken... but what I am not mistaken is that the drivers are "not an enhancement CD"

Well so much for the new driver.!

Dear Sir/Madam,

Regarding your enquiry, the mentioned unified drivers is not an enhancement CD, it is just the normal installation CD which contain the driver for the SB Live series and SB Audigy series with some basic applications. Please provide us the informations inside the DISKID file in the original installation CD which bundled with your sound card.

Last but not least, thank you for your interest and continuing support for using our Creative products. Feel free to contact us again if you require further assistance on our Creative products, giving us a full description of the problem encountered.

Best Regards

Customer Service

Creative Labs, Asia

[kennethc 0]

Whats your driver version?

Let me check if i have the same version.!

[ALDEGA 0]

The new drivers were released yesterday. Trying them out now.

Update: they didn't fix the crackling and I believe the quality of positional sound has decreased. At least it wasn't 370 megs to download this time

[nyles 11]

its partly fixed for me. vehicle engines, which crackled the most before, do not sound weird at al, anymore. However, on the other side, firing sounds are really fucked when shooting while aiming through sights. when shooting from normal view, they are okay though.

EDIT: I'm reverting my statement. Now the sound is totally fucked in the main menue and even partly in game. Even though the old bug is gone (which was easily worked around by changing view to 3rd person and back), the rest of the sound seems totally disorted. Strange thing is that this only happens with OFP. Every other game, movie or music have crystal clear quality. Flashpoint seems to be the only game affected so far...Makes me sad. Bis, please please please try to work something out with Creative Labs on this. Turning off hardware acceleration and/or eax doens't make a difference.

[SpaceAlex 0]

Well, there still is crackle, but much less than before.

The only thing i'm bothered now are low quality radio messages. It's annoying. Anyone knows how to fix this, because they work fine in WinMe?  

I have Creative Audigy.