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48-540: In May 1996, Aureal Semiconductor was founded from what previously was Media Vision Technologies Inc. after being involved in a financial scandal that led to then-CEO Paul Jain stepping down. Media Vision incurred approximately $ 104 million of aggregate losses in 1995 before the company was renamed. Aureal sustained further losses of $ 17 million in 1996 and $ 18 million in 1997. After having acquired Crystal River Engineering in May 1996, Aureal worked with them to develop and market

96-465: A "DSP", hoping to associate the product with a digital signal processor (the DSP could encode/decode ADPCM in real time, but otherwise had no other DSP-like qualities). Monaural Sound Blaster cards were introduced in 1989, and Sound Blaster Pro stereo cards followed in 1992. The 16-bit Sound Blaster AWE32 added Wavetable MIDI, and AWE64 offered 32 and 64 voices. Sound Blaster achieved competitive control of

144-555: A "stem cell-like" processor which would give a 100-fold increase in supercomputing power over current technology, as well as advances in consumer 3D graphics. At CES 2009, it was revealed to be the ZMS-05 processor from ZiiLABS , a subsidiary formed from the combining of 3DLabs and Creative's Personal Digital Entertainment division. In November 2012, the firm announced it has entered into an agreement with Intel Corporation for Intel to license technology and patents from ZiiLABS Inc. Ltd,

192-509: A 16-bit accelerator chip, an FM synthesis chip and a Mixed Signal DSP. In 1993, Media Vision updated its logotype to reflect its expanding product lines and broad foray into technologies beyond computer audio. Perhaps one of the biggest endeavors was the company's leap into software publishing with the creation of its Multimedia Publishing Group. CD-ROM titles such as Critical Path , Quantum Gate , and Forever Growing Garden were often bundled with its multimedia kits. The new logo reflected

240-647: A PC add-on card. Sim established Creative Labs, Inc. in the United States' Silicon Valley and convinced software developers to support the sound card, renamed Game Blaster and marketed by RadioShack 's Tandy division. The success of this audio interface led to the development of the standalone Sound Blaster sound card , introduced at the 1989 COMDEX show just as the multimedia PC market, fueled by Intel's 386 CPU and Microsoft Windows 3.0, took off. The success of Sound Blaster helped grow Creative's revenue from US$ 5.4 million in 1989 to US$ 658 million in 1994. In 1993,

288-404: A brutal market share decline caused by intense competition from Media Vision at the high end and Aztech at the low end. Sorkin, in particular, dramatically strengthened the company's brand position through crisp licensing and an aggressive defense of Creative's intellectual property positions while working to shorten product development cycles. At the same time, Esber and the original founders of

336-524: A counterclaim stating the firm was intentionally interfering with its business prospects, had defamed them, commercially disparaged, engaged in unfair competition with intent to slow down Aureals sales, and acted fraudulently. The suit had come only days after Aureal gained a fair market with the AU8820 Vortex1. In August 1998, the Sound Blaster Live! was the firm's first sound card developed for

384-521: A decade, resulting in criminal charges filed against Jain in 1998, his unsuccessful indictment on 27 counts of financial fraud, and judgments against Jain and CFO Steve Allen. After seeking protection under Chapter 11 of the federal Bankruptcy Code in December 1994, Media Vision Technology Inc. was renamed Aureal Semiconductor Inc. in May 1996. Media Vision's products included PC adapter cards, other hardware, and computer games. Internally, Media Vision

432-662: A long main unit and a subwoofer that houses 17 drivers in an 11.2.4 speaker configuration. It incorporates Dolby Atmos surround processing, and also features Creative's EAX 15.2 Dimensional Audio to extract, enhance and upscale sound from legacy material. The audio and video engine of the X-Fi Sonic Carrier are powered by 7 processors with a total of 14 cores. It supports both local and streaming video content at up to 4K 60 fps, as well as 15.2 channels of high resolution audio playback. It also comes with 3 distinct wireless technologies that allow multi-room Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and

480-537: A payment of approximately $ 470,000. In 2007, Creative voluntarily delisted itself from NASDAQ , where it had the symbol of CREAF. Its stocks are now solely on the Singapore Exchange (SGX-ST). In early 2008, Creative Labs' technical support centre, located in Stillwater, Oklahoma, US laid off several technical support staff, furthering ongoing concerns surrounding Creative's financial situation. Later that year,

528-451: A release to Creative from any infringement by Creative of Aureal's intellectual property including A3D . The purchase effectively eliminated Creative's only competition in the gaming audio market, and with it any requirements for Creative to pay past or future royalties as well as damages for products which incorporated Aureal's technology. Contrary to OEM companies (such as Creative which builds, brands and sells their own devices), Aureal

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576-498: A wholly owned subsidiary of Creative, and acquire engineering resources and assets related to its UK branch as a part of a $ 50 million deal. ZiiLABS (still wholly owned by Creative) continues to retain all ownership of its StemCell media processor technologies and patents, and will continue to supply and support its ZMS series of chips to its customers. From 2014 to 2017, Creative's revenue from audio products have contracted at an average of 15% annually, due to increased competition in

624-622: Is a Singaporean multinational electronics company mainly dealing with audio technologies and products such as speakers, headphones, sound cards and other digital media . Founded by Sim Wong Hoo , Creative was highly influential in the advancement of PC audio in the 1990s following the introduction of its Sound Blaster card and technologies; the company continues to develop Sound Blaster products including embedding them within partnered mainboard manufacturers and laptops. The company also has overseas offices in Shanghai , Tokyo , Dublin and

672-431: Is for dynamic or interactive environments such as simulations, games, video conference, and remote learning. A3D is not as effective for static productions such as movies which typically employ surround sound. A3D uses a subset of the actual in-game 3D world data to accurately model the location of both direct (A3Dspace) and reflected (A3Dverb) sound streams (A3D 2.0 can perform up to 60 first-order reflections). EAX 1.0,

720-539: Is still producing Chinese-language and bilingual software for the Singapore market, but nearly half of the company's income is generated in the United States and South America; the European Union represents 32% of revenues, with Asia making the remainder. On January 4, 2023, Sim died at age 67, with president of Creative Labs Business Unit Song Siow Hui appointed as interim CEO. Creative's Sound Blaster sound card

768-454: Is the technology used by Aureal Semiconductor in their Vortex line of PC sound chips to deliver three-dimensional sound through headphones, two or even four speakers. The technology used head-related transfer functions (HRTF), which the human ear interprets as spatial cues indicating the location of a particular sound source. Many modern sound cards and PC games incorporated A3D via license from Aureal. Due to Aureal's acquisition (see below)

816-457: The API was discontinued. Media Vision Russell Faust , COO Steve Allan , CFO Dan Gochnauer , VP of Engineering Wayne Nakamura , Director of Manufacturing Bryan J. Colvin , Director of Hardware Engineering Tim Bratton , Director of Strategic Marketing Jim Gifford , Director of Software Engineering Doug Cody , Senior Software Engineer Media Vision Technology, Inc. ,

864-474: The Apple IIc . In addition to Component Engineer James Persall , the engineering staff included electrical engineers: The Director of Software Engineering was Jim Gifford . Reporting to him were: The development of SCSI device drivers was outsourced to Trantor Systems . Sales staff included: Marketing staff included: Creative Labs Creative Technology Ltd. , or Creative Labs Pte Ltd. ,

912-494: The PCI bus in order to compete with upcoming Aureal AU8830 Vortex2 sound chip. Aureal at this time were making fliers comparing their new AU8830 chips to the now shipping Sound Blaster Live! . The specifications within these fliers comparing the AU8830 to the Sound Blaster Live! EMU10K1 chip sparked another flurry of lawsuits against Aureal, this time claiming Aureal had falsely advertised

960-636: The Silicon Valley . Creative Technology has been listed on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) since 1994. Creative Technology was founded in 1981 by childhood friends and Ngee Ann Polytechnic schoolmates Sim Wong Hoo and Ng Kai Wa. Originally a computer repair shop in Pearl's Centre in Chinatown , the company eventually developed an add-on memory board for the Apple II computer. Later, Creative spent $ 500,000 developing

1008-519: The Sound Blaster Live! 's capabilities. In December 1999, after numerous lawsuits, Aureal won a favourable ruling but went bankrupt as a result of legal costs and their investors pulling out. Their assets were acquired by Creative through the bankruptcy court in September 2000 for US$ 32 million. The firm had in effect removed their only major direct competitor in the 3D gaming audio market, excluding their later acquisition of Sensaura . In April 1999,

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1056-610: The file format .voc . In 1987 Creative Technology released the Creative Music System (C/MS), a 12-voice sound card for the IBM PC architecture. When C/MS struggled to acquire market share, Sim traveled from Singapore to Silicon Valley and negotiated a deal with RadioShack 's Tandy division to market the product as the Game Blaster. While the Game Blaster did not overcome AdLib's sound card market dominance, Creative used

1104-409: The "Made for iPod" program. On 22 March 2005, The Inquirer reported that Creative Labs had agreed to settle in a class action lawsuit about the way its Audigy and Extigy soundcards were marketed. The firm offered customers who purchased the cards up to a $ 62.50 reduction on the cost of their next purchase of its products, while the lawyers involved in filing the dispute against Creative received

1152-500: The 8830 Vortex 2 chipset, there is an official Final Beta (v5.12.2568.0) available for download from a variety of sites which can be found via most internet search engines . There is also a modified version of the XP driver that can provide basic audio functionality for the Windows Vista operating system and may also function with Windows 7 beta releases . A3D ( Aureal 3-Dimensional )

1200-461: The A3D audio technology. The technology was incorporated into video games, surround sound systems and sound cards. On March 5, 1998 Creative Labs sued Aureal for patent infringement . Aureal countersued because they believed Creative was guilty of patent infringement. After numerous lawsuits Aureal won a favorable ruling in December 1999, which vindicated Aureal from these patent infringement claims, but

1248-716: The A3D technology is now part of the intellectual property of Creative Labs . The technology was originally developed by Crystal River Engineering for NASA 's Virtual Environment Workstation Project (VIEW). Crystal River later commercialized the technology with a series of products including the Convolvotron and the Acoustetron. Aureal acquired Crystal River in May 1996 and rebranded the technology A3D. A3D differs from various forms of discrete positional audio in that it only requires two speakers, while surround sound typically requires more than four. The particular advantage of A3D

1296-635: The Cubic CT, an IBM-compatible PC adapted for the Chinese language and featuring multimedia features like enhanced color graphics and a built-in audio board capable of producing speech and melodies. With lack of demand for multilingual computers and few multimedia software applications available, the Cubic was a commercial failure. Shifting focus from language to music, Creative developed the Creative Music System,

1344-765: The PC audio market by 1992, the same year that its main competitor, Ad Lib, Inc., went bankrupt. In the mid-1990s, following the launch of the Sound Blaster 16 and related products, Creative Technologies' audio revenue grew from US$ 40 million to nearly US$ 1 billion annually. The sixth generation of Sound Blaster sound cards introduced SBX Pro Studio, a feature that restores the highs and lows of compressed audio files, enhancing detail and clarity. SBX Pro Studio also offers user settings for controlling bass and virtual surround. The Creative X-Fi Sonic Carrier, launched in January 2016, consists of

1392-587: The audio space. At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January 2018, its Super X-Fi dongle won the Best of CES 2018 Award by AVS Forum. The product was launched after more than $ 100 million in investment and garnered positive analyst reports. This new technology renewed interest in the company and likely helped to raise its share price from S$ 1.25 to S$ 8.75 within a 2-week period. The company

1440-416: The company faced a public-relations backlash when it demanded that a user named "Daniel_K" cease distributing modified versions of drivers for Windows Vista which restored functionality that had been available in drivers for Windows XP. The company deleted his account from its online forums but reinstated it a week later. In January 2009, the firm generated Internet buzz with a mysterious website promising

1488-613: The company had differences of opinion on the strategy and positioning of the company. Esber exited in 1995, followed quickly by Buchanan and Pomerantz. Following Esber's departure, Sorkin was promoted to General Manager of Audio and Communication Products and later Executive Vice-president of Business Development and Corporate Investments, before leaving Creative in 1996 to run Elon Musk 's first startup and Internet pioneer Zip2 . By 1996, Creative's revenues had peaked at US$ 1.6 billion. With pioneering investments in VOIP and media streaming, Creative

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1536-423: The company's business plan while an engineer at National Semiconductor based on Jain's vision of evolving multimedia from VGA to audio and video. Jain raised funding, based on a business plan on a single sheet of paper, from top VCs such as Brentwood, Nazem, 3i and others. Media Vision became a publicly traded company in late 1992. In 1993, Media Vision took over Pellucid, a spin-off of Silicon Graphics to form

1584-521: The company's desire to be known as a cutting-edge multimedia technology company. During the same year, the company expanded business operations into Europe with the establishment of Media Vision GmbH in Munich, Germany. Media Vision could not sustain its rise. On May 17, 1994, CEO Paul Jain stepped down as Media Vision and quickly became the subject of the longest-running securities fraud case in Silicon Valley history. The investigation and trial lasted nearly

1632-547: The competing technology at the time promoted by Creative Labs, simulated the environment with an adjustable reverb—it didn't calculate any actual reflections off the 3D surfaces. A3D was supported by 3DMark along with many other software titles of the late 1990s, including Half-Life , Unreal , Quake II , Soldier of Fortune , Jedi Knight , SiN , Quake III Arena (up to version 1.25), Unreal Tournament and Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force . Following Aureal Semiconductor's acquisition by Creative, support for

1680-567: The firm launched the NOMAD line of digital audio players that would later introduce the MuVo and ZEN series of portable media players . In November 2004, the firm announced a $ 100 million marketing campaign to promote their digital audio products, including the ZEN range of MP3 players. The firm applied for U.S. patent 6,928,433 on 5 January 2001 and was awarded the patent on 9 August 2005. The Zen patent

1728-777: The high quality of its positional audio. Near the end of Aureal's existence, they released a Vortex Advantage budget sound card aimed at systems integrators, which ran on the Vortex AU8810 chipset. Towards the end of 1999, the SQ3500 was announced, which ran on the Vortex AU8830 chipset, with the main addition being a new "Turbo DSP" daughter-board module. All Vortex soundcards are still functional with latest Windows 2000 / Windows XP drivers in Windows Vista and Windows 7 (32 bit editions only). While Windows XP will recognize and work with

1776-425: The legal costs were too high and Aureal filed for bankruptcy . On September 21, 2000, Creative acquired Aureal's assets from its bankruptcy trustee for US$ 32 million through the bankruptcy court , with the specific provision that Creative Labs would be released from all claims of past infringement by Creative Labs upon Aureal's A3D technology. The purchase included patents, trademarks, other property, as well as

1824-523: The new Visual Technology Group. Pellucid had taken over SGI's IrisVision business and developed high-performance video graphics cards, sold as the Pro Graphics 1024. After the demise of Media Vision, several of Pellucids employees founded 3dfx . Jain oversaw the development of several multimedia chips because he quickly realized that the audio board business would morph into audio chips on PC motherboards. Media Vision developed three complex chips such as

1872-552: The platform to create the first Sound Blaster , which retained CM/S hardware and added the Yamaha YM3812 chip found on the AdLib card, as well as adding a component for playing and recording digital samples. Creative aggressively marketed the "stereo" aspect of the Sound Blaster (only the C/MS chips were capable of stereo, not the complete product) to calling the sound producing micro-controller

1920-450: The time was in development of their own in house PCI audio cards but were finding little success adopting the PCI standard. In January 1998 in order to quickly facilitate a working PCI audio technology, the firm made the acquisition of Ensoniq for US$ 77 million. On 5 March 1998 the firm sued Aureal with patent infringement claims over a MIDI caching technology held by E-mu Systems . Aureal filed

1968-430: The year after Creative's initial public offering, in 1992, former Ashton-Tate CEO Ed Esber joined Creative Labs as CEO to assemble a management team to support the company's rapid growth. Esber brought in a team of US executives, including Rich Buchanan (graphics), Gail Pomerantz (marketing), and Rich Sorkin (sound products, and later communications, OEM and business development). This group played key roles in reversing

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2016-514: Was a fabless semiconductor company. This changed with their final product: the Aureal SuperQuad. However, to not anger the middlemen, Aureal did no marketing of its self-branded product. The Vortex audio accelerator chipset line from Aureal Semiconductor was designed to improve performance of their then-popular A3D audio technology. The first member of the line, the Vortex AU8820,

2064-482: Was among the first dedicated audio processing cards to be made widely available to the general consumer. As the first to bundle what is now considered to be a part of a sound card system: digital audio, on-board music synthesizer, MIDI interface and a joystick port, Sound Blaster rose to become a de facto standard for sound cards in PCs for many years. Creative Technology have made their own file format Creative Voice which has

2112-627: Was an American electronics manufacturer of primarily computer sound cards and CD-ROM kits, operating from 1990 to approximately 1995 in Fremont, California . Media Vision was widely known for its Pro AudioSpectrum PC sound cards—which it often bundled with CD-ROM drives—it is also known for its spectacular growth and demise. Media Vision was founded in May 1990 by Paul Jain and Tim Bratton. Early employees also included Russ Faust, Michael Humphries, Dan Gochnauer, Bryan Colvin and Doug Cody, all from Jain's prior company, Video Seven . As Bratton recalls, he wrote

2160-538: Was announced on July 14, 1997, and was used in by a number of sound card manufacturers, like Turtle Beach and TerraTec . After Aureal's release of A3D 2.0, the Vortex AU8830 (known as the Vortex 2) was announced on August 6, 1998. The Vortex 2 chipset won numerous industry awards, and was used among other places in the Diamond Monster Sound MX300, which achieved near-cult status with audiophiles and gamers for

2208-461: Was awarded to the firm for the invention of user interface for portable media players. This opened the way for potential legal action against Apple's iPod and the other competing players. The firm took legal actions against Apple in May 2006. In August, 2006, Creative and Apple entered into a broad settlement, with Apple paying Creative $ 100 million for the licence to use the Zen patent. The firm then joined

2256-672: Was dominated by its large engineering and marketing departments, roughly equal in size and reporting to the Chief Operating Officer Russell Faust . Director of Manufacturing Wayne Nakamura also reported to the COO. The company's engineering efforts were headed by VP of Engineering Dan Gochnauer , formerly of the Sperry-Rand Corporation . The Director of Hardware Engineering was Bryan J. Colvin , once an early employee of Apple Computer , where he designed much of

2304-613: Was well-positioned to take advantage of the Internet era, but ventured into the CD-ROM market and was eventually forced to write off nearly US$ 100 million in inventory when the market collapsed due to a flood of cheaper alternatives. The firm had maintained a strong foothold in the ISA PC audio market until 14 July 1997 when Aureal Semiconductor entered the soundcard market with their very competitive PCI AU8820 Vortex 3D sound technology. The firm at

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