Sim Wong Hoo, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Creative Technology, passed away peacefully on January 4, 2023, according to a letter that was sent out by the company’s board of directors yesterday, one in which it expressed gratitude for the immense contributions that the executive made during his tenure at Creative, which he founded in 1981.
Creative Technology is best known as the company behind the Sound Blaster audio cards, which rapidly rose in popularity following the release of the first model, the Sound Blaster 1.0 “Killer Card” CT1320A, in 1989, but later lost favor with gamers and other enthusiasts after the advent of alternatives that include onboard audio.
From the letter dated January 5, 2023:
Mr. Sim founded the Company in 1981 and has been the Chairman and Chief Executive Office since inception. Mr. Sim has played an instrumental role in developing the business and has provided the Company with strong leadership and vision. Under his guidance, the Company became famous for the Sound Blaster sound cards and is a worldwide leader in digital entertainment products. The Company also launched the multimedia revolution that drives digital entertainment with cutting-edge audio solutions which include premium wireless speakers, wireless headphones, powerful audiophile-grade amplifiers and digital audio converters, and next-generation home-theatre systems.
“I have known and worked with Mr. Sim for over 30 years,” said interim Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Song Siow Hui in a statement. “This is a sad and sudden development and we feel a great loss especially since Mr. Sim and I recently had extensive discussions on the future direction of the Company. During those discussions, Mr. Sim was full of fresh vision. Even on the night before, he had a long discussion with the Engineering team and was scheduled to meet with the Online Sales team the next day. The best thing to do now is to ensure the continued smooth running of the Company, and also to execute and realise the vision and strategy that Mr. Sim had for the Company.”
Creative Technology has set up an email account (rememberingsim@ctl.creative.com) for those who wish to share their condolences for Hoo, who has been described by the company as a “visionary, inventor, and entrepreneur who gave the PC a voice.”
Creative’s current Sound Blaster products include the Sound Blaster GC7, a game streaming USB DAC and amp with programmable buttons and Super X-Fi, a headpones technology that Creative says captures the listening experience of a high-end multi-speaker system in a professional studio.
Discussion (19 replies)
Join Discussion →Aw, that's a shame.
Creative has not been as influential in the last 15-20 years (in large part due to Microsoft killing off the DirectSound 3D Audio HAL with the launch of Vista)
In the early days of this hobby, getting a Sound Blaster (First a Sound Blaster Pro in 1991, and later an AWE32 in 1994) was what really started making PC gaming interesting compared to the bleep bloop PC Speaker era.
It's really a shame that Microsoft killed off the DirectSound 3D Audio HAL. Apparently Creative had no warning at all. They found out a few weeks before Vista launched and were like "Oh, shit, that's our entire business model". It's pretty impressive they survived that.
RIP sir. You helped changed the industry in a huge way. I may've stopped using sound cards with the advent of HDMI and improved onboard options of motherboards but I'll never forget the awesome sound I enjoyed with my P4 build in the early 2000s.
My first Sound Card was a Sound Blaster 2.0. But I don't think I even heard the name Creative Labs in the past five years.
They made quite a splash a couple of years ago with their new DSP based technology that attempts to make headphones sound like speakers.
They called it Super X-Fi. I used it on a Sound Blaster X3 and it was pretty impressive.
You have to take pictures of your ears, which it analyses with some sort of algorithm and creates a profile, that tries to mimic the different ways sounds simultaneously passes through our skull and brain, and enters our ear drums. Coupled with a headphone specific profile, they used that data to make regular 2 channel headphones sound "airer" and provide better surround sound.
It worked pretty well after I got dialed in on my X3, but then the thing went haywire after about a year, right after my warranty expired, of course.
I'm not sure I'd buy another one, as I kind of like the traditional headphone sound, but it is pretty cool tech if you ever get a chance to sample it.
Pretty sure mine was too. Been so long that I don't remember. I do remember being pissed when they lost a lawsuit with the engineers who helped in developing it due to not having everything properly licensed and put out a driver that flashed the firmware so that the advertised on-the-box 24/192 became 24/96. I updated the driver w/o realizing that and after I noticed the sampling rate changed I googled it and was shocked. Years later I got one of the X Audigy's or some such and used it for a few years. I still have that one sitting up in a closet. Used it with a P4 rig and then Quad2Core but retired it to use the optical with that rig and later on then GPU HDMI when I built the 2600K rig with its 2x 560 Ti's in SLI.
Sucks to lose advertised features, but in the grand scheme of things, it didn't make a difference unless you were working in audio production.
For playback purposes there is no benefit in anyhting over 16bit 44.1khz. You alwasy want your audio hardware to match the formats you are playing back, otherwise it results in dithering/upscaling, and 99.9% of the time, the source material is 16bit 44.1khz.
I had some form of Audigy I think in college. I can't remember. For some reason most of my college hardware got thrown out. I think I left it in a box in my parents basement, and they got rid of it after I moved out and started my first job. A bit of a bummer, but it is what it is.
After that I had a Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD starting in like 2009 I think? I had that in my machine up until very recently, when I pulled it because I just didn't need it anymore.
I've been using USB DAC's for years, but even after I made the switch, I found it nice to have the Titanium HD around for recording purposes, as none of my USB DAC's have inputs. The Titanium HD had actual RCA in and outs which was badass, IMHO. I loved not having to use a 3.5mm to RCA adapter all the time.
Aside from my time with the Aureal Vortex 2 (one of my favorite sound cards of all time), and a Turtle Beach or two in the super-early days, literally the entire time I've been using PCs I have been using SoundBlaster cards. I am still using a SoundBlaster (X-Fi).
RIP Mr. Hoo, thanks for all the awesome Creative Labs sh1t over the years.
Still really pissed about that. Now the only way to get hardware-accelerated audio in Windows is through applications using OpenAL instead of XAudio (thank you Unreal Tournament 1-3 and Serious Sam Fusion, and OpenAL output plugins for Winamp 5), or by using ALchemy (which translates DirectSound3D calls into OpenAL calls). At least in Linux ALL audio gets processed by the sound card.
That is a card of beauty! I went home for the holidays and mailed myself back my old computer I'd given to my sister years ago. Audigy 2ZS PCI. Can't wait to get 98 back on it. Mr. Hoo, RIP, you gave me the best memories I've ever had in computer audio.
No, the original 2.0 was 8-bit 11khz stereo, or 8-bit 44khz mono capable only. This is an 1991 card. I owned it between 1994-1996.
Where features were not fully exposed by the driver was the EMU10K days. I had a Live!, and you had to run 3rd party hacked drivers to be able to utilize the full potential, but then many games crapped out due to compatibility issues. Although by the mid 2000s even the official drivers had problems with new games, I used my Live! well beyond its intended shelf life.
The last sound card I used was an Audigy 2. Which served me until PCI ports died out.
For some reason, I don't remember what got into me, I purchased an Audigy RX in 2014, but it's still sitting in some drawer, I never actually used it.
I know I had a SB16 way back, my edge3D GPU/Soundcard sucked balls so I added one of those in my Cyrix p166+ machine.
Been rummaging in some of my old hardware and found my old Audigy SB 1349 and X-fi titanium Fatal1ty. Don't think I ever used anything then a creative soundcard since that Edge crap pos.
Although I used it for gaming I was also experimenting with transferring vinyl to wav back then but I totally agree otherwise. I was also using that PC as an HTPC and had it connected to a Sony Trinitron via gold-contact S-Video and a Panasonic 6.1 receiver. Back then, PowerDVD was a cool thing and my PC actually provided better playback than any standalone I had at the time. Good times.
You didn't use RGB? Shame!
Oh yeah, The US didn't have EUROSCART, at least there is one thing we were ahead in. Well, two we had 576i resolution on PAL compared to NTSC's paltry 480i.
Exactly but gotta say that pushing stuff at 1024x768 60hz back then looked pretty nice. Once I upgraded to some nice gold cables it got rid of nearly all the signal noise and looked really sharp.
Roommate had one of the early 8bit ones, I guess the SB 2.0 in his Gateway. I had a SB Pro, then AWE32 (midi was so cool back then, wonder why that died out), AWE64 Gold, Live, Audigy something, and still using the X-Fi Fatal1ty I got on clearance at Fry's like 15 years ago.
Somewhere in between was a Gravis something which sounded really good with music but games were an issue, also it had some kind of spider break-out cable in the back instead of regular ports and that broke at some point.
Honestly if the X-Fi ever dies (or becomes unsupportable) I doubt I'll buy another one. Just use onboard or hdmi or something. However having those optical in ports are nice when I want to use my PS4 in my office.... which honestly I haven't done in 3-4 years anyway