Creative Labs: The Microsoft of Sound - Competition Breeds Innovation

This is not the first time Creative Labs has acted as a less than reputable member of hardware community. Before their business collapsed and were purchased by Creative Labs, they really had given competition in sound card business. Competition obviously breeds improvement, as proofed by Vortex chipset and Aureal3D API found in games like Thief back in day. They also given PCI based sound cards, while CL was stuck on ISA bus. In order to right that oversight, Creative "purchased" the other company known as Ensoniq in order to get access to PCI technology. Then Creative took Aureal to court over supposed patent infringement, which Aureal finished up winning. Though, lengthy legal proceedings cleaned them out of cash, and hurried their end at hands of Creative. As that time, there actually have not been any true competitors to CL. At least not when it comes to game audio, despite of what has just found its way into motherboards.

Currently, I have only named what amounts to a grand history lesson. That still leaves out present situation. Creative does earn some credit for their support of DVD-A standard in PC's, which nobody else now offers that I know of. Though, due to a lack of competition, as ATI is to nVidia, or AMD to Intel, they look to be happy to sit on their thumbs and utilize dubious patents to force their software into places where it was not preferred. I might not be alone in hoping that upcoming HD Audio replacement for AC '97 in included audio breaks into their profit margins a bit. Or one company's suggestion to offload sound processing to GPU in video cards instead comes alive and shows promise something to divide what amount to a one man show in area of PC audio now.