Problem with the audio market

Problem with the audio market

Posted Mar 30, 2008 23:20 UTC (Sun) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625)
Parent article: A creative example of the value of free drivers

As far as I can tell, the computer audio market is splitting. Most customers can get by with the "good enough" sound on the motherboard, and people who want high-end sound are going with USB Audio or FireWire products, which get the signals that you want to be clean out of the electromagnetically noisy environment of the computer case. So Creative Labs, with what used to be the "mainstream" product is getting squeezed, and IT vendors usually express their market fears in the form of sqealing about "intellectual property." I think we can safely translate Phil O'Shaughnessy's comment into modern Internet speak, as follows: WE R TEH FAIL KTHXBYE.

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The HDA standard is a huge improvement over the Ac'97 stuff.

I think that firewire and USB stuff is mostly todo with the fact that is the only realy easy
way to improve the audio quality of laptops and such. If your going to do DJ stuff then it's
not practical to carry around a PC tower with a half dozen audio connectors hanging out the
back. And anyways the Macbooks and such are a nice fashion accessory for people who do that
sort of thing.

I still expect that they still cause problems in terms of latency and such.