What happened to Creative Technology, the Asian company that created the legendary Sound Blaster sound cards?

• Creative Technology marked a before and after in the PC world with its sound cards

• Its products were once practically indispensable for some users.

Long gone are the days when a sound card was practically necessary for many people. In the late 1980s, audio began to gain prominence in the PC world. Creative technologiesThe Singapore company saw this as a great business opportunity, and for many years its Sound Blaster products dominated the market.

However, nowadays buying a sound card has become a rarity. The solutions built into the motherboard are quite satisfactory for most users. And those who need extra quality can use an external DAC in conjunction with an amplifier rather than changing the internal configuration of their computer. So what happened to Creative Technology? Let’s get a look.

The company that was synonymous with PC audio

Creative Technology was founded by Sim Wong Hoo and Ng Kai Wah in Singapore in 1981. Like many other companies, their first products did not bring them success. Long before entering audio world, Creative focused on developing personal computers. In 1984 it introduced its first equipment, the Cubic99, and in 1986 it released the Cubic CT, which we see on the cover.

Sales of the Cubic CT fell short of expectations, presumably due to how difficult it was to gain a foothold in the PC clone market. But this device had some very interesting features: it could display color images and had a sound card. It was the latter that was important for the next few years of Creative.

Creative began selling its Creative Music System sound card, opened a US subsidiary called Creative Labs, and established ties to the software world to promote its product. Since this proposal was aimed at computer gamers, was renamed Game Blaster. Creative was becoming an international company.

In November 1989, Creative released the Sound Blaster 1.0 sound card. It was a board with recording capabilities, a video game controller port, and an 11-voice FM synthesizer. Inside was a Yamaha YM3812 chip which, interestingly, was the same one used by rival Canadian manufacturer Ad Lib.

The main difference between the Canadian product and the Creative product was that the latter had support PCM modulation. This is the key element to ensure CD-quality sound reproduction. The Sound Blaster soon enjoyed huge sales thanks to the new Intel 386 processor and Microsoft Windows 3.0 operating system.

The proliferation of audio on PCs led to the release of improved versions of Sound Blaster, but the first obstacles were not long in coming. A change in the Windows 95 hardware support model and motherboard makers’ decision to include integrated audio solutions were a blow to the company, which began trading on the Nasdaq in 1994.

Creative management thought about diversifying its business, so it also entered the CD drive and video card market with Blaster EXXTREME. But things did not go very well, these movements gave rise to economic losses and the company even experienced a collapse in the value of its shares. Either way, it still dominated the PC audio market.

Among the company’s biggest successes at the time were the Sound Blaster 16 card, released in 1992, and the Sound Blaster Live line, which launched in 1998 and two years later embraced surround sound with Sound Blaster 5.1. We can’t deny that the company hasn’t stopped innovating. In subsequent years, the company introduced MP3 players, USB sound cards, headphones, speakers, soundbars, and even webcams. Many of these products make up his catalog today.

One of the company’s last major launches occurred in 2019. Creative has released the Sound Blaster AE-9, a kit consisting of a sound card. PCI-e and DAC 32bit/384kHz with dual headphone amplifier and audio control module. The product, which promises to once again redefine PC sound, currently costs 299.99 euros.

Creative voluntarily delisted from Nasdaq in 2027, so its shares are now only traded on the Singapore Exchange. The company’s shares have fallen 68.68% over the past five years. It is at the financial level that the company has been suffering losses for more than three years, that is, no profit is recorded in its annual balance sheets, although management is optimistic and confident that it will reduce operating expenses.

Images | Creative technologies (1, 2) | coolCaesar

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