Sim Wong Hoo has died (opens in new tab)

It wasn't just sound. The second generation SoundBlasters had a proprietary CD-ROM controller integrated, this was not yet standardized, it was before the IDE CD-ROM. It was the birth of the CD-ROM, and of Multimedia itself, as a product. In the early 90's we used to buy a boxed "Multimedia Kit" from Creative, with SoundBlaster, CD-ROM drive and speakers. Very popular and the best way to "add multimedia" to your computer, and enter the new world of multimedia and massive data, like encyclopedias, and CD-ROM games like Myst. I remember the excitement. https://64.media.tumblr.com/57f25b53fd58e3bad9cf1959f49a82f8...

I was gifted with a paper notebook that has a 3d effect PCB printed on it as its cover. From the chips' inscriptions, I found the source, and it's a Sound Blaster sound card :) Best gift ever.

Not my image, but I have the same one: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/pcb-notebook--5410653427112781...

When soundcards were cool like GPUs are now, great times.

The one thing about PC sound cards include SBL was in comparison to other cards they were super noisy. The hiss that came off them was much more noticeable. At the time, every Mac was much more quiet than PCs. There were a couple of PC sound cards that were much more quiet (Turtle Beach cards come to mind), but the typical Creative card sounded like it had an air leak.

Creative were also pushing Environmental Audio eXtensions (EAX) on to many games and there were several versions of the techonology requiring upgrades of the soundcard until it was killed off by the release of Windows Vista when Microsoft discontinued DirectSound3D.

I believe Creative would be a very different company if EAX were still around. Their business was killed overnight.

As a kid from a poor family, Sound Blasters were too pricey and I ended up with something called AdLib in early 90s. Used to just beeps and screeches till then, suddenly hearing X-Wing music (not much speech, that was weakness of it) playing actual music from loudspeakers was shocking.

In the late 90s I had a little 32MB(!) Creative Nomad player that I carried around in my pocket for a long time in the early days of MP3s...

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Creative_Nomad_MP3_P...

This was the first thing I owned that really felt like it was from the future.

Some of their Jukeboxes have great sound quality and character. I still have a Muvo^2 (Square) which has a very nice character of its own.

Their Gigaworks speakers also very nice. I have their T20 series II and it's sound stage is amazing for its size.

I have used their Live!, Audigy and Audigy2 ZS cards, which were sounded nice for their time. However, I still won't forgive them for being strictly Windows only and refusing to cooperate with Linux explicitly.

I now have an Asus Xonar D2X, and this thing sings, and it has native Linux support.

Good old Nomad Jukebox and Zen Touch (loved them) and the Soundblaster cards of the '90s. It's too bad Mr. Sim didn't manage to tack the right course to keep Creative a continuing player in personal entertainment devices and then smartphones. Maybe it was a failure to hire/empower people with the right strategic vision, amidst dramatic changes in consumer preferences.

RIP Mr. Sim and thanks for inspiring us Singaporeans to dream bigger.

I wanted one of those so bad. I opted for the Diamond Rio CD Player (SP250)

I loved that thing. That was an exciting time in tech because prices were falling into the affordable range for a lot of portable/mobile tech. (It was clunky and prohibitively expensive prior to that.)

When I was a kid in Sweden back then I didn't know it was a Singapore company. Now that I have also live in Singapore, I learned quickly that it was local, as it's very well regarded here.

In action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h73kd6wsBq0

Still got mine here in a box with my SB live 5.1. That thing was a blast to mess around with as a kid, but not really practical for anything semi-pro compared to just pluging a midi keyboard due to the limited number of keys. Had a Yamaha PSS (451?) which was a tad better but the key size being smaller than a regular piano was also an issue. Couldn’t get rid of that keyboard tho, its epic :)

i wouldnt read too much into it. it's now a $100m market cap, basically a penny stock. at that level any media mention leads to random spikes from boiler room types

edit: browsing a bit turned up this thing:

> According to the company’s most recent annual report, for FY2022 ended June, Sim held 33.1 per cent of Creative. He was also the only substantial shareholder.

> The Singapore Code on Take-overs and Mergers requires anyone acquiring 30 per cent or more of the voting rights of a company to extend an offer for all other shares in the company.

And DrSbaitso

From Wikipedia [1]

> Creative Technology Ltd. is a Singaporean multinational technology company. [...] The company also has overseas offices in Shanghai, Tokyo, Dublin and the Silicon Valley (where in the US it is known as Creative Labs). It is listed on the Singapore Exchange (SGX).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Technology

This. Creative had scale and ability to reduce costs for both E-MU and Ensoniq. These companies had extensive silicon design and fab experience (Dave Rossum is still at it in fact) that could have been leveraged and some truly innovative products could have been made.

Still computer software was rapidly eating the Audio hardware market and things like samplers started to seem both redundant and one and the same thing. (Akai s5000 and Z series were basically a pc)

I’m sure it was not an easy call to kill the hardware business for emu/ensoniq but I wish they hadn’t.

Edit: I will also forever think of this video when I hear the name creative labs- https://youtu.be/h73kd6wsBq0

I will remember Creative as the company that issued repeated lawsuits against Aureal Semiconductor (losing repeatedly), then bought their assets when Aureal was forced to declare bankruptcy due to legal fees.

Was E-Mu the brand with the unicorn logo? I knew a few musicians that had racks of 1RU pieces of gear. I remember the E-Mu name and the unicorn logo, and in my brain they are on the same gear. But in my brain, things get fuzzy when reaching back further than 15 minutes ago let alone 30 years.

There was also forcing EAX into Doom 3 by threatening a patent lawsuit over Carmack's Reverse, which both Creative and John Carmack independently invented.

https://techreport.com/news/7113/creative-patents-carmacks-r...

To be fair, quite a few music synthesizer companies of that era died. Moog, Sequential, Oberheim, PPG, Synclavier, …

Rossum is still doing synths and recently re-issued a SP2100, at $6000 a pop though... Hopefully he can get his brand name back.

I think it was Ensoniq who were ex Commodore employees responsible for the Sid chip on the C64.

I thought Espressif is Chinese? Their company history seems to indicate that they were founded in Shanghai:

https://www.espressif.com/en/company/about-us/milestones

All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain...