OPTI Message Board - Msg: 2875787

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Microcap & Penny Stocks : OPTI

OPTI 0.00175

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Dec 26 9:30 AM EST

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To: Liatris Spicata who wrote (384)	12/4/1997 11:16:00 AM
From: slob	Read Replies (2) of 482

Larry, IMHO DirectX is a better audio standard and it effectively kills Soundblaster. Soundblaster compatibility (100%) is only possible if you use ISA bus and interrupts in the same way that CREAF does. It is well known that the biggest problem with soundblaster compatibility is to make the same errors that CREAF made (i.e. their system does not do exactly what the spec says it should). Anyway, nearly all of CREAF's IP is built around Soundblaster. Intel and MSFT are more interested in simplifing the PC than competing with CREAF however removing the ISA bus and soundblaster interrupts removes any competative advantage that CREAF has in the Audio market. Currently the biggest hurdle to competing against CREAF is that you need to develop your software drivers and get them tested and approved by MSFT, this process takes about 6 months to a year. MSFT is not interrested in promoting Soundblaster so it is not about to spend time qualifing new drivers for an old standard. Consequently new competitors are all concentrating on PCI based audio and DirectX. CYRX tried to just copy the Soundblaster reg set and respond to the software as if they were a soundblaster card. CREAF sued CYRX and won forcing them not to use CREAF drivers. This effectively killed CYRX's product. If you adopt the DirectX approach than all the drivers are MSFT's and are available for use by any DirectX compatible hardware. DirectX removes the need to develop software drivers which means that any IC producer can easily develop an audio controller. What will differenciate audio controllers is things like A3D, prologic decode and all the new buzz words that companies like AURL are promoting. OK all that said whats important is that Game producers be convinced that one standard or the other will dominate the market. Traditionally compatibility has been INTC's strongest asset because of this game producers knew that their software would run on new as well as old platforms. With DirectX Wintel is basically telling the game makers to give up any sales into existing systems so that they can have better functionality on new systems. The problem here is that games are not usually the reason that a new PC is purchased. If you look at the game sales over 80% are for existing systems with 20% being sold with the PC. Now if CREAF is able to convince the game producers that Soundblaster is a viable standard than they will continue to write games for it and MSFT/INTC will be forced to backdown with DirectX / PCI audio. This effectively enables CREAF to maintain a 30 to 40% control of the PC audio market. If you assume that in mid 98 all systems shipped are PCI only than CREAF's share would fall to about 25%(best case). Slob

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