Creative aims high in world of digital audio

Creative aims high in world of digital audio

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): I have a short list of technology companies that
I have a lot of respect for. One of them is the Singapore-based
Creative Technology Ltd. So, when I got an invitation last month
to their launch of Nomad Jukebox, I jumped at the opportunity and
said "Yes!"

It turned out that there were more than a hundred IT
journalists from all over the world invited to the event. We were
hauled from our hotels on the Friday morning to their
headquarters in the well-landscaped Singapore International
Business Park. The spacious lobby of the Creative Resource
building immediately confirmed my mental image of the company.

Why do I have so much respect for this company? It was the
first from this part of the world that set the industry standard
in the audio subsystem for PCs. No, I did not have the first
generation Sound Blaster soundcard. The first soundcard that I
bought back in 1991 was the 8-bit Pro Audio Spectrum from a
company called Media Vision. But I have never heard of this
company again after they released the Pro Audio Spectrum 16 and
Pro Audio Studio soundcards one or two years later.

In contrast, the Sound Blaster soundcards from Creative have
been topping the charts of editors' choice in computer magazines
year after year ever since the products were introduced, and won
a lot of accolades in 1989. Buy any software with the audio
feature today, such as a game or a multimedia encyclopedia title,
and chances are you'll see that a system requirement is "a
SoundBlaster compatible soundcard". That is how well received the
products have been.

"We are still making the 16-bit Sound Blaster cards, which is
already eight years old," Angeline Chiang, Creative's Channel
Marketing Specialist, said to me as we toured their factory
floors. A soundcard is basically a piece of hardware that we add
to a PC to enable it to produce sounds, including music from
compact discs. We connect the speakers to the soundcard. Today,
the premium soundcards from this company are the Sound Blaster
Live! Series, which features Environment Audio Extension (EAX)
technology for an enhanced audio experience.

Over the years, Creative has expanded its product line to
include CD-ROM drives with or without a remote control, graphics
cards, DVD-ROM drives, CD writers, speakers, PC cameras, modems,
etc.

In the lobby of the main building, I encountered a Creative
PC, which has all the video and audio ports that you can think of
right on the front panel.

"This PC is pretty expensive, because it is meant to be used
as a high-end multimedia entertainment center," said Toh Sork
Lee, Sales Manager at Creative's Asia Pacific Group. The Creative
PC is sold only in selected markets.

In their complex, as one would expect, there is a mini museum
that tells the history of the company. It started in 1981, when
Sim Wong Hoo, Creative's founder, chairman and CEO, was still a
young engineer and thought that a personal computer should also
be able to produce quality sounds and not be confined to the
annoying beep emanating from its tiny speaker. His company has
definitely come a long way from a US$6,000 startup company in a
small house in a back street of Singapore to become the first
Singaporean company to list on the NASDAQ and the setter of
standards in multimedia PCs.

PDE

With a lot of expertise and experience in the audio field, it
is no surprise that Creative Lab was also quick to embrace the
MP3 technology. But it saw more than just an addition of sounds
to the otherwise silent PCs. It saw a new trend in how people
entertain themselves using the new technology. And if there is a
Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) that enables us to carry our
office in our pocket, why not Personal Digital Entertainment that
gives us music wherever we go. MP3 is the holy grail of the PDE.

"But we are not in the business of encouraging people to
pirate copyrighted materials," Sim Wong Hoo quickly added in his
welcome speech.

Creative's PDE products actually fall into three categories.
Firstly, there is the desktop products which include the Sound
Blaster family of soundcards -- Graphics/3D Blaster, Video
Blaster, Modem Blaster, Broadband Blaster, PC-DVD Encore and
other Blaster drives. What characterizes all these products is
that they all have to be attached to a PC to function.

The second category includes Internet appliances such as the
NOMAD family of portable digital audio players and the WebCam Go
line of PC cameras. Both the PDE desktop products and the
Internet appliances can be used to access PDE Internet
applications and services as well as online MP3 libraries, of
course.

A portable MP3 player can download MP3 files from the PC
through the USB or other connections, and then store them on its
flash memory or hard disk. The files in turn can be downloaded
from the Internet (remember Napster?) or "ripped" from a compact
disc.

Creative was not the first to come up with portable MP3
players. In fact, it was the Rio from Diamond Multimedia that
broke the ground and not without causing a big uproar in the
recording industry.

Creative then caught up with Diamond with its Nomad, which was
followed by Nomad II and then the sleek Nomad II MG portable
digital music players. The latest product is the Nomad Jukebox,
which features a 6 GB hard disk and can store 150 CDs worth of
music. This was the product being launched during last month's
event in Singapore.

There were other interesting hardware and software products
that were demonstrated in the showroom. One of them was the
BlasterKey, a 49-note touch-sensitive electronic piano that can
help us compose music in MP3 format. In a lot of ways, however,
the BlasterKey resembled my 10-year old Miracle Piano Teaching
System, only the Miracle did not speak MP3. By the way, if you're
familiar with the Cambridge SoundWorks speakers, the company has
also been acquired by Creative. Cambridge Soundworks speakers are
now used in Sony's PlayStation 2.

Creative vowed that they would come up with a great new PDE
product at least once every six months. They will have to, as the
market for MP3 players will soon be crowded with cool gadgets
from all sorts of vendors. This week, for example, Compaq is
scheduled to launch its own portable MP3 player.

At any rate, Creative has promised to let me test-drive a US$
499 Nomad Jukebox. I have seen some of its exciting features, and
I'm looking forward to reviewing it for you. (zatni@cbn.net.id)