Yeah, they settle so people wil buy ANOTHER card from them. :)

And the card they sell will probley STILL make at least a 30% profit off of. :)

You are right Steve. I probably shouldn't have just copied the title. I should have worded it differently. So I just changed it.

John

I posted this in the game forum I go to. Several people there had no clue about the lawsuit. Of course they didn't buy the card for 24-bit 96khz support, just for gaming so they also had no clue that it didn't work like people thought.

That's funny I've been saying for a couple years now, not to believe the writing on the box of a creative sound card. I guess that can be taken literally now. Thanks for the article, it was a nice read. Creative still came out ahead. Like it mentions, the only ones that will notice is people doing audio work, where they need 24bit processing. Then even then, who in the audio world would be dumb enough to buy another creative card, once they finally learn it's really not a professional sound card and there's much better choices out there? 25% off your next purchase, what a joke, those lawyers handling the case must have been very good. That's like going into a restaurant and being served a half rotten steak, and the restaurant manager saying, "we're sorry, here's a 25% off coupon for your next visit, enjoy your meal." Here's how it should have worked. An appology letter should be sent out to everyone who registered their Audigy/Extigy sound card, along with a public announcement where Creative has to either 1.) Replace their card with a new one that is 24bit/96Khz or 2.) Entitle them to a full refund, because they never got what they purchased.

The big picture irony to me is that I listen to a lot of audio "professionals" in these forums and the cakewalk forums, and they're always screaming you have to have at least 24bits or if you're going to someone who doesn't use a 24bit system, then they're not a pro......blahh...blahhh..blah, followed by a lot of hot air. I hear it all the time. They never give any good reasons why you need 24bits, but they're willing to argue that you must have 24 bits. Psssst, I recorded quite a few songs on 16 bit systems, and those same people said it sounded "professional". While I do agree 24bits are better, and I have a very good understanding why, it just goes to show you in this Creative example, if you tell youself it's 24bits, although it isn't, you just might believe, it just might be 24bits. There's an entire large sample of people who have just been, what we referred to in the audio community as being "placeboed". This is where you ask someone to listen to something critically and you tell tem it's one thing and it's not. For example, I tell someone to critique my "surround" system and tell me how good the surround imaging is to them. The part they don't know is that the system is actually a "stereo" system, and there's no surround processing involved. The audio company I work for does a lot of market research like this, that I get to attend, and you should hear the comments sometimes, I get to hear.

I didn't sucker for this card because it was 24 bit. I suckered for it because I was a complete newbie to computers in general and the only thing I had to go by was what I saw in your typical stores. It looked like the best card available and nobody I talked to ever suggested anything else. I should have gone into a music store and asked questions, but I insisted on researching myself and never even considered the music store approach.
There's no better teacher in life than an expensive mistake.

You see there Steve, you are a prime example of my above statement.

"Then even then, who in the audio world would be dumb enough to buy another creative card, once they finally learn it's really not a professional sound card and there's much better choices out there?"

You see you've unintentionally made your mistake, you've learned and you moved on and are that much more wiser today for it, but it makes my entire point. Creative is offering 25% off of the next purchase to people like yourself who notice it, and unfortunately that's not the only thing you've noticed over time, but you're probably most likely are never going to benefit from a 25% discount, because you won't buy a Creative sound card for your next sound card purchase.