Daniel_K speaks out about his modded (better) Creative drivers

We think Creative acted pretty foolishly in forcing Daniel_K to remove his modded drivers that allowed various Creative sound cards to work up to spec under Vista -- customers had already bought the hardware, after all -- but Daniel seems to understand why he's at the center of the firestorm. Speaking to Custom PC, Daniel Kawakami admits that promising faster releases for more donations probably raised some red flags, but he's not happy that Creative took to publicly threatening him on forums, and says that a simple private email would have probably worked a lot better. Just looking at the list of features Daniel managed to enable, however, it certainly looks like Creative should probably be spending time working on driver development instead of threatening its fans. Way to increase your relevance, Creative.

[Thanks, Alex]

[Rafer @ Apr 1st 2008 6:59PM]

Or they could hire him.

[benjesuit @ Apr 1st 2008 7:07PM]

Perfectly said.

[fischju @ Apr 1st 2008 7:10PM]

Why would they? They know exactly how to do what he did, they didn't want to because they wanted people to buy the higher-end or newer cards.

[whatishalo? @ Apr 1st 2008 7:31PM]

But where's all the PR if they hired the guy? It wouldn't have made any tech blogs and just happened silently. Any PR is better than no PR these days....even negative PR gets their names in the news

[Sauerkraut @ Apr 1st 2008 8:58PM]

I doubt he would want to work there.
These companies are hell to work at

[DiscoCat5 @ Apr 1st 2008 10:06PM]

beat me to it.

[DiscoCat5 @ Apr 1st 2008 10:07PM]

beat me to it. they should have payed him a settlement and taken his work, wouldve saved them money time, effort and resources.

[Tony the Troll @ Apr 1st 2008 10:31PM]

"Or they could hire him."
"Why would they? They know exactly how to do what he did, they didn't want to because they wanted people to buy the higher-end or newer cards."

And that's why I will never buy another Creative product again... By design Creative products are trash the moment you upgrade your system.

[Kurian @ Apr 2nd 2008 1:01PM]

@fischju & Tony
Its not like your 6 series GeForce is doing much in Vista either.
Hardware need to be upgraded. The X-Fi has been around for a while and its a VERY GOOD card for gaming with EAX5. The effects n stuff are unprecedented.

[Mike @ Apr 1st 2008 7:03PM]

Why must creative take the apple approach (thinking with their lawyers)?

[Philip @ Apr 1st 2008 7:18PM]

Agrees, yet at least Apple dosen't restrict 3rd parties that make the "mac experience" better

To respond to the whole thread, where is the logic in any of this... there just isn't ANY whatsoever

[UKNigel @ Apr 1st 2008 7:32PM]

"yet at least Apple dosen't restrict 3rd parties that make the "mac experience" better"

Are you familiar with the "iPhone"? It's pretty new I realize, but maybe you should check up on it, see what you find.

[phanbouy @ Apr 1st 2008 7:56PM]

they have Nigels in the UK?

[GadgetUK @ Apr 2nd 2008 6:53AM]

"they have Nigels in the UK?"
We're chocked full to the rafters with them, old boy.

[esilver @ Apr 1st 2008 7:08PM]

Wait... is this a T-Mobile website? I'm confused by the magenta...

[Shaun @ Apr 2nd 2008 1:24AM]

Maybe it's to remind readers to take everything with a pinch of salt, cos it's April fools day.

On a more serious note, why did this Daniel K chap agree to stop so quick? He should have told them to buzz off.

[Adam @ Apr 1st 2008 7:09PM]

This story defiantly takes home my PR blunder of the week. He was fulfilling a well needed/respected service of your customers. You don't publicly dismiss him, you politely tell him to scram to his own soapbox, after all this whole conversation went down on Creatives' own boards, or you offer him to come aboard and help you out officially.

[Rafer @ Apr 1st 2008 7:17PM]

You mean other then the whole magenta thing? right?

[Fuzzball @ Apr 1st 2008 7:13PM]

Or hire his ass. Some companies...gotta be an attention-whoring-dick and can't be professional and direct.

[thehumanyawn @ Apr 1st 2008 7:15PM]

No drivers STILL? Can you say "worse than nVidia?"

[ethana2 @ Apr 1st 2008 10:20PM]

Proprietary is proprietary. But yes, they are worse than nVidia, by quite a long shot.

nVidia, open the blob!

[Eh @ Apr 1st 2008 7:18PM]

He would be a hero if he got creative soundcards working on mac. I remember a lot time ago there was a driver project that did that.

[schmitty338 @ Apr 1st 2008 8:40PM]

...you get a +1 just because I love your picture so much....

[Eh @ Apr 1st 2008 7:20PM]

*long time ago

[broli @ Apr 1st 2008 7:31PM]

It makes you wonder what kind of monkeys work at Creative. That all it took was one guy fixing up the driver garbage they're offering. This is why open source should prevail...

[ethana2 @ Apr 1st 2008 10:23PM]

If the driver was open, he could have made every possible modification to it with no trouble at all. I'm glad you see how obvious that is.

He did not have the right to modify that driver. That's not /his/ fault, but he did not.

[Richard @ Apr 2nd 2008 12:36AM]

Most monkeys would be too inquisitive too work for Creative. Half the problem is that they are a brick wall when it comes to to communicating with their customers. This guy could have sent them the modded driver by email a dozen times and it wouldn't have found its way past the automated "you might also want to buy a pair of Creative headphones to go with your defective hardware while we do nothing about resolving your problem/complaint/giving-us-the-work-we-should-have-done-ourselves" email.

[yaksplat @ Apr 1st 2008 7:32PM]

Ever since Creative decided not release new drivers for their older products on Vista, I decided that onboard audio was perfectly fine. I've got digital optical out now. What do I need you for Creative?

[dj-kenpo @ Apr 1st 2008 11:16PM]

after this I'm pretty sure it's clear no one needs creative.

if any creative employees read this,
I hope you fall down a set of stairs.

[aplen22 @ Apr 2nd 2008 1:43PM]

No kidding, just get an actual home theatre receiver nowadays and that should do it! Bout the same price too.

I bought an Audigy 2 Platinum when they first came out and the only problem that I had was that the optical and coaxial digital ins would not stay in sync with anything! This would have been an easy fix for creative and they DID know about it but do you think they gave a s**t? Nope, that's why I don't buy that crap anymore.

On the flip side there was a fix for this problem that, yes you guessed it, involved buying more hardware from them. "Quality" must NOT be their middle name.

[jeff @ Apr 1st 2008 7:32PM]

You have to wonder if this talent pool is out there, why isn't Creative (and other companies) just purchasing or licensing the drives from him, put their seal of approval on it after testing and save some bucks and time with their in house development staff?

[fagib @ Apr 1st 2008 7:38PM]

Daniel_K is a tool.

for 1, he shouldnt have accepted donations

second of all, he can easily continue to distribute this anonymously, but seems to prefer the publicity.

thirdly, I have been using my audigy se on vista x64 with no issues. I just ordered a X-FI Elite Pro (on sale at newe** with a cool headeset).
There seems to be drivers for it that were updated only a couple weeks ago.

Creative is actually a decent company. They are slow with Driver development.

[SNP @ Apr 1st 2008 7:56PM]

Wow, I didn't know Creative fanboi actually exist in the wild...

[decypher44 @ Apr 1st 2008 7:57PM]

Not saying that you are, but you sound like a stealth PR guy for Creative.

[Andrew @ Apr 1st 2008 8:01PM]

He seems to prefer the publicity, eh? Gee, maybe he should just keep fixing drivers behind the scenes, at his own time and expense and receive nothing back - including public recognition. While some people may work for free as in no money received, you won't find many people willing to do so without at least being recognized. What, exactly, would be the point? Perhaps if you were talking about charity work, as in serve food to homeless, then I could understand. But writing drivers for a company that has people paid to do so but don't, either from incompetence or for selfish reasons (e.g. no drivers for old products)? You'd have to be a tool to do so.

[fagib @ Apr 1st 2008 8:10PM]

fanboy of creative? no. Im just a little tired of every company getting bashed nowadays.

Alot of these cards came out before vista so they dont have to support them past XP.

Ill admit creative has dropped the ball a bit with vista...it wouldnt cost them a fortune to have better development.

But this kid cant make a business out of developing drivers. If he wants to do it as a good gesture towards the computing community, right on. But, he cant take money, its not right.

Creative may have a reson for slow development. I dont know. I have read that daniel_k drivers have caused vista bsod errors.

lets stick to bashing sony.

[sn1per @ Apr 1st 2008 8:17PM]

Of course he can take money. It would be wrong if he demanded money, but he didn't. He just said "hey, if you guys feel like throwing me a bone, here's my paypal address". There's nothing wrong with that at all. Donations are VOLUNTARY, not forced.

[phanbouy @ Apr 1st 2008 9:56PM]

"tired of bashing companies"

what is it with tools in this country (the US) who are so anxious to suck up to authority/monopoly/etc that they're willing to conveniently disregard all logic and reasonableness just for the sake of being 'contrarian' or something. the psychology really baffles me. cognitive dissonance or something?

[Decoy @ Apr 1st 2008 10:14PM]

Im just a little tired of every company getting bashed nowadays.... ...lets stick to bashing sony.

WTF?

Get out PR drone.

[Reader @ Apr 1st 2008 10:44PM]

I don't even see what's wrong with him selling the drivers if he were to (probably something legal, but still). If Creative can't make a better driver than one guy and his computer, than they have no right to force me to use it. It's not like it affects them negatively as you have to buy their hardware before you can use Daniel_K's drivers...

[Abuzar @ Apr 1st 2008 11:41PM]

Look man, I think he deserves some money and recognition for putting effort into this. You pay software makers because they put effort into their programs and those programs are useful. I don't see how this is any different.

[paul34 @ Apr 1st 2008 7:40PM]

One of the biggest reasons I switched back to XP after trying to give Vista another try. Even with some home-brew drivers (not sure if I used DAniel K's, but whatever was popular about 4 months ago), it improved, but was still shockingly bad. The audio quality was below average, at best, even with the better drivers.

Back to XP, sound quality is absolutely amazing again (I use an Audigy 2 ZS). I was forced to use integrated audio on my new motherboard in Vista - which surprisingly, is very good, but my Audigy 2 still definitely has the advantage in XP. Plus, I already have the hardware audio card... why use a software-ish solution when it is not necssary.

It is sad that I'd probably have to buy an X-Fi just to be able to enjoy music and video and such in Vista.

[wrc4 @ Apr 1st 2008 7:48PM]

"We have read the strong feedback about Creative's forum post regarding driver development by Daniel_k and other outside parties. Creative's message posted on our behalf by our Company spokesperson tried to address our concern about the improper distribution of certain software which is the property of other companies. However, we did not make it as clear as we would have liked that we do support driver development by independent third parties. The huge task of developing driver updates to accommodate the many changes in the Vista operating system and the extensive testing required, including the lengthy Vista certification requirements for audio, makes it very difficult for Creative to develop updates for all past products. Outside developers have been very helpful to Creative and our customers by developing updates for many of our Sound Blaster products, and we do support and appreciate these efforts. This however does not extend to the unauthorized distribution of other companies' property. We hope to work out a mutually agreeable method for working with Daniel_k in supporting his efforts in driver development. Going forward, we are committed to doing a better job of working more closely with third parties to support their development for our products and our customers."

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&thread.id=120975

[Eh @ Apr 1st 2008 9:26PM]

Translation: We support Daniel making drivers just as long as he doesnt let other people use them.

[John @ Apr 1st 2008 9:38PM]

Can someone simplify that for me? Do they just want a cut of the money Daniel is making? Or, is it to control the (i guess) good quality of their product?

[John B @ Apr 1st 2008 10:34PM]

I don't know. It sounds more like...

Translation: [enable smoke] "We're pissed that Daniel caught us red-handed disabling features based not on capability but on operating system, which was at the very least unnecessary and at most unethical, and that he let people know about it. Asking for donations gave us the excuse that we wanted to try to paint him as the bad guy in this matter instead of having all of the blame on us."

I have bought nothing but Creative Labs cards since I started building my own PCs almost 20 years ago. Well over a dozen Creative Labs, even the old Sound Blaster 16 with Wave Blaster daughtercard. (Does anyone else remember those?)

Because of this incident, the X-Fi Gamer that is in my current PC is the last Sound Blaster card that I will ever buy.

[darkstar @ Apr 1st 2008 8:17PM]

where can i get the drivers???
thats what i want to know!
screw creative!

[David Becker @ Apr 1st 2008 8:17PM]

I don't buy Creative products, ever since the screwed me out of a $50 rebate

[3rdsun @ Apr 1st 2008 8:20PM]

Now if someone can get video drivers for HTC products and HTC doesn't threaten their ass that would be awesome

[Carl G. @ Apr 1st 2008 8:42PM]

Sweet, look at those cheap Xfi on ebay :D ... kidding.