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Did Creative win the patent battle?

Creative didn't win anything with regard to the alleged "patent battle." They simply obtained a patent on a method of track selection which may, or may not, be infringed by the iPod. This has not been claimed by Creative yet, nor defended by Apple. As there was no fight, there was no battle, and thus they've won nothing. They've simply "gained" a patent, and not necessarily at Apple's expense.

I hate it when journos get their facts skewed like this.

Sandisk is #2 at 6.9% share.

Creative is dead.

Looks like I'm first post. Big deal.

The battle hasn't actually started yet.

what about the war?

<< Creative didn't win anything with regard to the alleged "patent battle." They simply obtained a patent on a method of track selection which may, or may not, be infringed by the iPod. This has not been claimed by Creative yet, nor defended by Apple. As there was no fight, there was no battle, and thus they've won nothing. They've simply "gained" a patent, and not necessarily at Apple's expense. >>

Right you are. The worst that will happen from Creative's patent, is that Apple will buy it, and Creative will exit the player market as part of the deal.

who buys sound cards anymore? Integrated audio is here to stay.

*thoomp* *thoomp* *thoomp*
Another one bites the dust-uh!

To Greg:

Look again...

big deal.

Seriously, who the fsck DOES buy sound cards anymore?

While I jumped off the sinking Windows ship only about 7 months ago, I had previously been building a new PC, or upgrading my existing one for about 12 years... In that time, ibought every major supported brand of sound card made until about thee or four years ago, when integrated on-board audio finally caught up, and in most cases, easily outdid any add-in card.

For that matter, since about 2000, I had built about 500 or so computers (for clients) ranging from low-end, basic machnes, to top of the line game-machines and CAD workstations, and not a single one didn't come with excellent built-in sound.

Creative is a redneck zombie... dead as a doornail, but too stupid to comprehend the concept.

MW - certain, as in I am certain of this!

"...despite spending about $100 million to promote its MuVo and Zen models..."

Has anyone here actually SEEN a Creative commercial? (Magazines don't count.) No matter how much money Cratering has spent, not (MW) many of us have seen what they got for it.

If Creative sues Apple they also are including Cingular and Motorola and other like interface designs.

Tommo and Gregg have it right. Creative didn't win any "battle" over the patent. They were simply granted a patent, which could just as easily be overturned in the future.

I guess this is a fine example of the "lazy reporting" that Steve Jobs was talking about in his interviews with the media at Apple Expo Paris.

I, for one, would like to see Creative bite and try to sue Apple over the patent. It should also sue Apple for using the name "iPod nano." After losing more than $30 million last quarter, there would be nothing better than for creative to spend another $10-20 million and man-years of effort filing lawsuits that have little chance of winning. And if it happens, watch Apple lawyers flood Creative with hugely expensive discovery requests.

Yep, that would be fun to watch, as lawyers suck on Creative's cash flow to buy themselves Ferraris. No need to actually develop great products, the lawyers will save the day!

Not.

Who buys sound cards? Gamers, audio professionals, people with motherboards that don't have integrated audio.

You know - Geeks!

BTW, great use of beleagured in the headline! It had a nice ring to it.

Oh wait, that's my iRokkor...

I have to buy an external soundcard since apple didn't think spdif was something usefull to put in my 15" pb :(

for stationary computers though, I agree that seperate soundcards are dead

Looks like I'm first post!

Seriously, the only thing Creative about spending $100M advertising an infrerior product against Apple is the market share projection - 40% Globally - for the MuVo and Zen players? Please... the best thing they have going for them is an FM radio - and with no good music store/software integration, its a no brainer why they are looking at what they DO know, high end audio cards. (Who didn't have a Sound Blaster back in the day? - That's Creative you know!)

MDN word: way

Plus, from Paris, Steve said that the reporting on that subject has been "lazy." There's apparently a lot more to the story than what's being reported and a few tricks Apple legal still has up its sleeve.

They are a mid level electronics company that supplied commodity level sound cards for mass consumption. Professional audio engineers have far better options available to them than some Creative card.
Again, Creative suffer due to lack of software. High end cards utilize or require high end apps, and Creative doesn't provide either function!

CREATIVE COULD MAKE A KILLING MAKING SOME BRILLIANT IPOD ACCESORIES! - TAKE SOME OF THE STUFF THEY WERE DOING WITH THEIR OWN PLAYERS THAT WERE SECOND RATE AND DEVELOP THEM AS ALL PURPOSE ACCESORIES!!!!

IF YOU CANT BEAT THEM JOIN THEM!!

Finally… Creative starting to do something right.

That Creative Zen Micro thingamajig is a hideous looking beast. It's funny to read anti-iPod zealots write about the Zen as if it is the best MP3 player ever. Let it go and get a nano. Color screen, no moving parts, "cool" factor, Apple quality, great price, cross-platform - what is there NOT to love about the iPod?

Sorry, Creative. Go declare war with yourself, or Sony or Dell - someone you can compete with.

Right you are bad news bear:

Creative could have been a fine Apple partner about 5 years ago. They had a golden opportunity when Apple briefly discontinued built-in sound, but blew it with that POS Soundblaster for Mac card. With no support from the company, it was doomed to fail from the beginning. Thank goodness others were willing to step into the niche and provide decent products.

Creative is reaping what they sowed.

actually, I have a killer sound card for my G4. It lets me run my mixer right into the Mac, and the stereo outs plug into my regular Onkyo receiver or my 4-track, if I so desire. It's the move for recording guitars/vocals/basslines, etc. I generally disdain digital recording, but it has it's uses...

Creatives Sound cards blow away any other cards on the market. Once X-Fi is RTM for portables (soon)..Creative will reign because apple will be forced to use the chip...Your right, If you cant beat them in the crappy player market..Screw em with better sound..Apples iPod wont last long once its out...Unless the license it from creative...

Most of you have no idea what Creative makes..Their products are top notch.

http://www.tomshardware.com/consumer/20050818/index.html

When did Apple briefly discontinue sound? Was I asleep?

Its nice how Microsoft Daily News leaves out the fact that creative owns 90% of the sound card and enhanced video creation market...Good and unbiased... great job MDN, I think you deserve the Hall of Shame Award..

Bigots

Microsoft Daily News leaves out the fact that creative owns 90% of the sound card and enhanced video creation market

---

a) I didn't know people still cared about that market.

b)If they own 90% of the market.. what kind of upside is there to winning the other 10% (besides, growing the market, of course)

oh yeah.. i almost forgot..

Creative can out-niche market Apple any day of the week.

Sound cards? *chuckle

Mike
Your right mike, no one cares about the sound or content creation markets...??Duh

Are you a retard?


Who said they were going for that other 10 %

Geez man..Your anal

Firt post! I'm first post! SOY EL PRIMERO, NUMERO UNO!!!! THE FIRST!
Get a life...
FIRST!!! POST!!!!

The term "sound card" is being thrown around rather loosely.

If all you want is stereo output to your receiver, all Macs since the Mac II have provided it. Such "sound cards" are a product with no market in Mac-Land.

If we are referring to hobbyist/professional-level gear (multi-track in/out, high sample-rate, +4 dbu level, etc), then Creative neither owns 90% of the market, nor are their "cards" the best out there.

I can't speak to the PC-gamers-listening-to-their-games-through-their-stereos-market, cuz I don't give a rat's ass.

GaydisOne, you must be one of those anti-iPod zealots I was referring to. Don't be mad that Creative is redirecting its efforts. It should - it has wasted a lot of money in the MP3 player space.

And by the way, my Soundblaster card still works very well, thank you.

This from Business 2.0...anyone at MDN care to reply to them?


Thank you for your note. We have our facts straight. I wish
MacDailyNews.com had taken the same pains we had in getting
its own facts straight.

According to IDC, Creative's share of the MP3 player market --
both flash and hard drive -- is 10 percent. MDN's mention of
flash-only market share is irrelevant and off-topic. And Creative
was recently awarded a patent on technology on which Apple had
also applied for a patent. Creative won the patent; Apple lost.
That's a "patent battle" in my book, and Creative won.

Yours,

Owen Thomas

_____________________________
Owen Thomas
Chief of Reporters, Business 2.0

415 293 4866

My hearing (like most people) is not good enough to get the latest super duper monster killer sound gizmo. Who are they making this crap for, people with dog hearing?

I love live music is smokey little jazz and country bars.

Clueless mac zealots continue to live up to their names. The only integrated audio solution widely recognized as great by the PC community was Nvidia's Soundstorm, which was superior to every other integrated audio solution and rivaled the best of Creative's soundblaster line. Unfortunately, Nvidia dropped their MCP chip with the introduction of the Nforce 4 chipset.

Yes, other integrated audio do the bare minimum these days (5.1, digital, etc...). But as shown above, clueless mac zealots confuse bare minimum with premium quality. Creative's Audigy 2 series have superior sound processing and hardware than any current integrated audio and competing sound cards (that's not aimed exclusively for the professional market), and the new X-fi series just opens the gap even further.

Review here:http://www.anandtech.com/multimedia/showdoc.aspx?i=2518

LOL Clueless, we are laughing at you.

No one is questioning the superiority of Creative's sound card hardware. But we take exception to the ridiculous statements about "inferior" iPods that Creative has been spouting. That would seem to be news to you.

Also, with regard to the Business 2.0 note, what a laugh!

A battle is something where two or more sides challenge each other directly. Apple didn't lose their patent to Creative and Creative never challenged Apple's patent application either. That's not a battle.

What a pompous idiot. I suppose Apple also "lost the patent battle" to the guy who claims he patented the idea of a digital music library.

Typical media, trying to create a "David vs. Goliath" set-up to heighten the drama. As Steve Jobs said, it's lazy reporting.

Business 2.0 seems to be stuck on stupid.

Apple installs Texas Instruments sound cards into all of their computer products last I checked. Ti makes agreat integrated sound cards, Apple will never be forced to use Creative sound cards.

NewType,

Great sarcasm! So good, I almost took your reply to be real. It gave me a good chuckle.

User_01,

Gee, I wouldn't mind Creative's sound card technology in my PowerMac. Better than the default stuff we get in Macs these days!

Clueless LOL dude:

There is absolutely nothing "superior" about Creative's X-Fi Platinum to Apple's built-in sound. And by "nothing, I mean NOTHING.

Creative's sound cards processes ordinary digital audio (from games, CDs, or DVDs) into phony surround ala Dolby Pro Logic or DTS Neo 6. This is a capability built-in to every surround receiver on the market. Fancy names like "crystalizer" and "xtreme fidelity audio processor" cannot mask the reality that these cards are merely applying surround processing and frequency curves to the sound. A 16-bit signal source will still contain 16-bits worth of information even after it is manipulated in a 24-bit process.

We audio purists don't like when something messes with our audio signal. We don't watch our DVDs with "spatial enhancement" processing turned on. And if we did want to spatially enhance our audio, we prefer that it be done in the RECEIVER, rather than in some sound card (we trust Yamaha, Sony, Denon, or Pioneer to do do a better job than Creative).

Furthermore, the built-in audio processing capability of a G4 or G5 Mac is 64-bit. Anything Creative's cards are doing to the audio signal could be mimicked under OSX's Core Audio; though again, it would be best to send pristine, unaltered audio to the receiver and have the processing occur just before the amplifier.

Please do not insult us with your silly sound card B.S. The ad hoc, strap-on reality of PC audio is in no way superior to Apple's built-in capability. One need only run Logic or Digital Performer on an Apple (with no additional sound add-ons) to realize the built-in audio on a Mac is professional grade.

We don't need your stinking sound cards.....

block6..

there is no such thing as the Sound market, dork..

Sound Cards.. ? Yeah.. Creative dominates.. like I said.. who gives a shit..

they can scrape the last 10% or try to force sound cards on us (grow the market) what an upside..

Do they dominate Sound Creation? no.

How freakin' vague can you be?!

is a sound card like a sound person? would you trust it with your life?

allah is great (but jesus is more fun)

iHave no iLife--

"...despite spending about $100 million to promote its MuVo and Zen models..."

Has anyone here actually SEEN a Creative commercial? (Magazines don't count.) No matter how much money Cratering has spent, not (MW) many of us have seen what they got for it.

Advertising isn't about seeing. It's about remembering. You've very likely seen the ads several times. It just wasn't memorable.

"Informed", you truly are delusional if you think Apple's integrated audio is "professional grade." Then again, as your other posts shows in other threads in addition to this, your stupidity glares quite apparently when it comes to any video/audio topic concerning the PC sector. Your ignorance and "cover my ears, i don't give a rat's ass" attitude towards PC gaming (and the technology that drives the industry) itself further proves your limited, short-sighted, zealous scope holds no relevance in these topics.

Your attempts to dismiss Creative with arguments concerning audio filters fall flat, as the issue is not manipulation of an audio source itself (as its an option based on personal tastes), but the underlying technology and limitations itself.

Anything Creative's cards are doing to the audio signal could be mimicked under OSX's Core

Please do not insult us with your silly sound card B.S. The ad hoc, strap-on reality of PC audio is in no way superior to Apple's built-in capability.

Spoken from the mind of a true blind zealot. Apple's integrated audio can never handle the same amount of internal audio channels compared to Creative's line (especially considering the integrated audio of Apple relies on CPU utilization....Creative's new 51 million transister chip can handle 30,000+ typical processor MIPS, compared to 1300 of the Audigy 2, which was still superior to anything Apple had at the time.)

Apple's integrated audio cannot process in realtime accurate (and thats the key word here) multiple environmental effects based on object positioning, depth, refractions, reverberations, etc...based on a 3D environment.

Why is it that only Creative Audigy 2 and Soundstorm have been THX certified?

Any more idiotic statements "misinformed?"

I don't know what planet your from, dude, but your "facts" are assumptions.

My dismissal of Creative's filtering and processing is spot on. That's what they are bragging about. That's what their "high-end" cards do.

"Can't handle the same amount of audio channels.." What the hell does that mean? Would you like to explain what you mean? Apple's G4 and G5 CPU-based audio can EASILY handle the same amount of processing and have plenty of muscle left over,

"Real time accurate" is your "keyword." What the hell does that mean? All digital audio processing has latency. Are you claiming that the Creative cards running on a PCIs slot have less latency?

What do you think you mean by the term "accurate?" Do you think a Mac's audio is "inaccurate?"

"..multiple environmental effects based on object positioning, depth, refractions, reverberations, etc...based on a 3D environment." You haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about. Have you heard of AltiVerb? Did you know that it is Mac-only?

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Altiverb/

You are operating on the PC assumption that audio issues require a coprocessor of some kind. In the Mac world they don't. This was true even before the advent of OSX. Macs handle audio natively in a manner you apparently don't understand.

Some research for ya:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/coreaudio/

or this:

http://www.apple.com/powermac/performance/

95% of all professional recording studios run Macs. Products like DigiDesign's ProTools were Mac-only for many years before they were ported to PCs. While no serious hobbyist or professional would, it is possible to run applications like Digital Performer or Logic (with UNLIMITED audio tracks) entirely on stock Macs, using no "sound cards" of any kind. The only thing that isn't professional-grade about the stock Apple sound abilities are the analog -10 dBu mini jacks. Creative's RCA jacks are only a minor improvement.

Are you still claiming that your silly Creative cards best Apple's out of the box performance? You better provide some proof other than the over-the-top product descriptions on Creative's website. Their marketing department would have you believe that their cards will miraculously make commercial CDs and DVDs sound better than the professionals who created them are capable of. Talk about stupid marketing hype.

You are WAY out of your league here. Here are some photos of MY project studio:

http://homepage.mac.com/markjam/Studio/PhotoAlbum11.html

Please enlighten me as to how you acquired all your audio expertise, or go back to playing your dumbass PC games.

P.S. THX certification is utterly unimportant. My Yamaha A/V receiver is not THX certified, but I'll put it up against anything that is.

Again. I don't want my "sound card" doing what my receiver is designed to do. I don't want to bring analog 5-channel information into my receiver because the sound is degraded in the process. My receiver wants the unaltered digital signal.

I am curious how you define "professional grade" since you idiotically accuse me of being "delusional." Please enlighten me with your buzzwords and marketing hype.

"My dismissal of Creative's filtering and processing is spot on. That's what they are bragging about. That's what their "high-end" cards do."

Spot on? Spot on right up your backside with your obvious blind zealousness. I ask you again, what exactly does Apple's integrated audio itself have that is superior to Creative? Your link to a software suite has NO relevance whatsoever.

Let's take a look at one of your ignorant statements:
Creative's sound cards processes ordinary digital audio (from games, CDs, or DVDs) into phony surround ala Dolby Pro Logic or DTS Neo 6. This is a capability built-in to every surround receiver on the market.

These filters are applied (at the user's discretion if they wish) if there is no original surround encoded data in the first place. Considering most games released within the last year have at least 5.1 sound, this is not even an issue. Of course, being totally oblivious to another industry because you "don't give a rat's ass" shows your stupidity quite well.

It's a capability built into "every receiver on the market"....what about Apple's integrated audio? Creative's sound cards (from Audigy 2 on up) are damn good enough to pass stringent audio certifications from major sound studios...the cards themselves are powerful enough to apply these "filters" and processing continously in the background WITHOUT barely any CPU cycles. You are basically required to run a seperate sound processing suite utilizing a good amount of CPU cycles to even achieve the "same" filters and processes.


What the hell does that mean? Would you like to explain what you mean? Apple's G4 and G5 CPU-based audio can EASILY handle the same amount of processing and have plenty of muscle left over.

Heh, that's a laugh. Care to tell me exactly how many 3D positional audio sources Apple's integrated audio can handle without a huge CPU hit? Integrated audio solutions without onboard MCP chips generally hit >50% above 16 channels....Audigy 2 and Soundstorm can handle 32 3d positional channels at around 3% (up to 64 in case of Audigy)...Creative's new X-fi can handle upwards of 1000+ (still doubt their 51 million transister chip?).

If you were doing pure audio work in a studio, the hit would be fine. However, multitasking, multithreaded environments is a different story (such as a 3D game with 64+ positional audio sources).

What the hell does that mean? All digital audio processing has latency. Are you claiming that the Creative cards running on a PCIs slot have less latency?


What do you think you mean by the term "accurate?" Do you think a Mac's audio is "inaccurate?"

Frequency response, noise level, dynamic range, THD+ noise, stereo crosstalk and intermodulation distortion...these tests have clearly shown Creative's strength in audio fidelity since the Audigy 2 line....

http://www.anandtech.com/multimedia/showdoc.aspx?i=2518&p=7

"You haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about. Have you heard of AltiVerb? Did you know that it is Mac-only?"


And that has absolutely nothing of what I was talking about. Accurate sound processing of multiple enviromental sources under EAX HD, all done in real time. Of course, the same can be done on a regular CPU, but I doubt programmers love the idea of sound hogging up anything over 50-60% of CPU resources.

I also like how you're hypocritcal with your statement
"Please enlighten me with your buzzwords and marketing hype."

yet, you've proudly pointed links to Apple's own pages? Here, here's one for you:
http://www.soundblaster.com/resources/read.asp?articleid=53831&cat=1

Great feedback from many hardware pundits concerning the technology. No other consumer level audio solution (including Apple's own integrated audio) can come close with the same level of quality and performance.

Are you still claiming that your silly Creative cards best Apple's out of the box performance? You better provide some proof other than the over-the-top product descriptions on Creative's website. Their marketing department would have you believe that their cards will miraculously make commercial CDs and DVDs sound better than the professionals who created them are capable of. Talk about stupid marketing hype.

P.S. THX certification is utterly unimportant. My Yamaha A/V receiver is not THX certified, but I'll put it up against anything that is.

Utterly unimportant? Utterly unimportant to brain dead "fanboi's" like yourself, trying to downplay Creative (probably as a grudge from Creative Zen vs Ipod) when THX certification only verifies the quality of Creative's line of soundcards since Audigy 2.

...To ensure the highest possible quality in home cinema, THX defines stringent picture and sound track criteria for film-to-DVD (and film-to-VHS) transfers. Such DVD titles are labeled as "THX Digitally Mastered for superior sound and picture quality" or simply "THX Certified". THX also defines stringent performance standards for audio/video source and processing components. These include strict performance standards for DVD players, receivers, preamplifiers, power amplifiers, speakers, interconnect cables, speaker cables, and even the room's acoustic characteristics (for dedicated home theater environments).

http://timefordvd.com/tutorial/THX.shtml

A: A mark of excellence in the entertainment industry, THX Certification promises consumers and media professionals that the certified venues they visit, and the certified products they purchase, have been evaluated and tested to meet the highest standards for picture and sound performance. THX is the only third-party company specializing in quality assurance programs and technologies for home theatre component manufacturing. The company's Home Theatre Certification programs provide consumer electronics manufacturers with independent analysis of home theatre products, as well as additional expertise for their design and engineering efforts. It ensures manufacturers' systems and components meet or exceed the industry's highest levels for performance-long before they make it into the hands of consumers.



To achieve THX Certification, home theatre products must meet or exceed our performance requirements under "normal" playback functions. For receivers and controllers, we also add patented post-processing features such as ReEQ, Timbre Matching, Adaptive Decorrelation, Adaptive Speaker Array and Boundary Gain Compensation. When a product switches video, we test it to guarantee that it does not degrade the signal. If a manufacturer claims that their product can switch HD, we test that, otherwise we test it for SD signals. THX Ltd. does not test for product longevity and we do not test "custom" or "DSP" modes such as Cathedral, Sports and room compensation.
http://www.audioholics.com/FAQs/THXp1.html


You are WAY out of your league here. Here are some photos of MY project studio:

Never out of my league to put overzealous fanboi's like yourself, with baseless arguments just because you don't particulary have interest a competing product (and other industries) in there place.

Look shitwit,

Your fundamental lack of all knowledge prevents me from responding in detail. You read, but do not comprehend. Every single statement I have made is true. I linked you to Apple's website so that maybe you could finally comprehend that Apple's "integrated audio" is the computer in its entirety, but you still fail to comprehend. Ever hear of GarageBand? It doesn't need a stinking sound card.

Every one of your completely idiotic rebuttals have been utterly false or have completely missed the point. I give up on your sound card argument. You win. You and the sound card are perfect for each other. A silly toy for a dullard boy.

As to THX, someday you may learn that THX certifying a single component in a system is MEANINGLESS. The placement of your speakers, the overall acoustical behavior of your listening environment contribute far more to the quality of your audio than any single component in the system. If your listening environment creates standing waves and nodes it is completely irrelevant that your amplifier, when running at 85 watts, produces .0003% more total harmonic distortion measured at 1kHz, than it does at running at 35 watts.

When THX was certifying entire theater installations (speaker placement, amplifiers, and ROOM ACOUSTICS - the whole SYSTEM) then THX had relevance. Certifying an individual component is a STUPID marketing ploy. And it works for stupid people like you. So Creative paid to have a certification, so F'n what? Put that soundblaster into your typical 20' x20' room with 9' ceilings and the speakers wedged in the corners and it still will sound like shit in 60% of the room.

I can't be bothered with your blathering ignorance any further. You are the epitome of a "blind zealot." Go buy your soundblaster with its xtreme everything and crystal super-dooper audio enhancement gizmotron. The chicks will dig ya as you shoot another zombie. Shitwit.

Ok, Shitwit. I'll bite. Time to educate you.

A Mac's "integrated audio" is the entire Mac -- operating system and computer. This was true under Systems 7, 8, and 9 (utilizing the Sound Manager extension), and it is even more true under OSX (utilizing Core Audio). A G3, G4, or G5 CPU will process circles around Creative's $400 sound card. Period. The audio demands of a computer game are trivial. Some triggered samples and some music loops. Whoopee.

Utterly false #1: "Apple's integrated audio can never handle the same amount of internal audio channels compared to Creative's line (especially considering the integrated audio of Apple relies on CPU utilization...." You would have to be the stupidest moron in the world to believe that Creative's sound chip is more powerful than a PowerPC of any stripe.

<object positioning, blah, blah, blah..."</i> Not only can it do that, it does. See #1. The stupidity here is compounded by the fact that "realtime accurate" is a meaningless term, and IF it had any meaning at all, it would apply to RECORDING, not playback.

So much unintelligible crap its impossible to number: "Care to tell me exactly how many 3D positional audio sources Apple's integrated audio can handle without a huge CPU hit? Integrated audio solutions without onboard MCP chips generally hit >50% above 16 channels....Audigy 2 and Soundstorm can handle 32 3d positional channels at around 3% (up to 64 in case of Audigy)...Creative's new X-fi can handle upwards of 1000+ (still doubt their 51 million transistor chip?)."

Where to begin? First lets get our terminology correct, ignorant twit. The Creative fancy-pants sound card has SIX CHANNELS. Count 'em, six. It outputs 5.1 surround: six discreet channels. What you are idiotically calling "channels" would be more akin to "tracks" or "samples." The Mac can process far more simultaneous tracks than ANY computer game could possibly throw at it.

As for "3D positional audio sources" (where do you get this crap?), learn this now: stereo and/or monophonic audio is panned (statically or dynamically) within the 5.1 sound field. The amount of processing power required to "position" audio within the available output channels is TRIVIAL.

I love this spew: "Integrated audio solutions without onboard MCP chips generally hit >50% above 16 channels..." You're pulling this out of your ass! If I were to load my four-year-old Dual G4 with two additional output cards from Mark of the Unicorn (http://www.motu.com/products/pciaudio/HD192/expansion.html/en) I could OUTPUT up to 96 processed channels (the correct usage of the term "channel") and INPUT up to 96 raw tracks/channels SIMULTANEOUSLY! That is 32 times more channels than the superdooper soundblaster. The strain would be on your hard drives, not the CPU. Note: MOTU cards do not offload any audio processing from the Mac's CPU; they only route the digital signals to their external breakout boxes.

Please read this part carefully because it comes up again later: the Mac's "integrated audio system" doesn't care where the audio signal comes from or where it goes (input and output are "hardware abstracted," look it up). Audio can be routed to the headphone jack, Firewire, USB, Toslink, ethernet, wirelessly over an Airport Express, or (gasp!) sent out a PCI card. Or any combination of the above.

Like a moron, you keep confusing the circuitry behind the -10 dBu minijack with the Apple "integrated audio system." I conceded that the minijack was consumer grade.

I provided the link to AltiVerb to enlighten you. But you failed to comprehend its significance since you don't comprehend any of the terms you throw around. AltiVerb was the first of its kind and it was introduced shortly after PowerMac G4 was introduced (AltiVerb requires AltiVec, hence its name). AltiVerb is a TRUE convolution reverb that runs as a plugin to a host software program.

The lowly kind of spatial enhancement processing you and Creative brag about (<object positioning, blah, blah, blah..."</i>) utterly pales in comparison to AltiVerb, both in terms of realism and in terms of processor requirements. The type of processing Creative brags about is available in every A/V receiver on the market, including the $129 Onkyo you can buy at Best Buy. Like a total idiot, you read Creative's marketing hype and went off all serious about how processor-intensive this phony 3D reverb is. Not hardly. It is trivial. You asked why Apple's "integrated audio system" doesn't have it. The answer is: it doesn't need it. (continued)

(continuation of your lesson, shitwit)

Utterly false # Lost count of them all: when asked to explain what your lofty-sounding "keyword" meant, you responded: "Frequency response, noise level, dynamic range, THD+ noise, stereo crosstalk and intermodulation distortion..." That would be a really great answer except for the fact that none of those terms have anything to do with realtime processing or "realtime accuracy." They are hardware specs. Those terms apply to things like amplifiers. They all measure ANALOG properties. As stated above (go read it again slowly), Apple's audio system is hardware abstracted, so if I were to route my "Apple integrated audio" processed signal DIGITALLY through the G5's built-in optical Toslink connector, none of your fancy terms even apply.

Nice try though, Shitwit. I'm sure you fooled yourself.

And it keeps getting worse. Like how after stating that <object positioning, blah, blah, blah..."</i> --and after I have shown you that it can, and does with AltiVerb -- You later write: "And that" (Altiverb) "has absolutely nothing of what I was talking about." (actually, it was precisely what you were talking about) Accurate sound processing of multiple enviromental sources under EAX HD, all done in real time. Of course, the same can be done on a regular CPU, but I doubt programmers love the idea of sound hogging up anything over 50-60% of CPU resources." How did you get from the categorical term "cannot" to the completely contradictory phrase "of course, the same can be done"? Here's how: you can't even follow your own line of crap. Then you try to blind me with "all under EAX HD." "EAX HD" is another of Creative's BS marketing terms. Like "Crytalizer" and "xtreme" everything. Spare me.

Shitwit, you really ought to beware when you start throwing the terms "idiot," "idiotic," and "uninformed" at other people.

I agree with "informed" above.

I'll be honest right up front and say that most of this is over my head, but I did watch a documentary on Lucasfilm and THX and it is true that the certification of an entire system is what ensured great sound (this included the size and shape of the theater, seat and speaker placement and even the types of fabrics in the auditorium. Even the engineers (and George himself) explained that any single component would not make a system great. But a single component could ruin a system. I believe that the certification in this case is purely marketing.

Also, I used to work at a recording studio and I remember well that all tracks were panned on the mixing board when mixing from 2" 24-track to 2-track for mastering. Informed is correct, the processing power for placement is trivial, far more important is speaker placement and something we called "imaging".

And for digital mastering (usually from the DAT mix-master) all we ever used was Apple (as far as I know it is all anyone used). It was the only computer that could handle it.

~M

PS- Nice home studio, by the way.