David Hamilton, Creative Labs UK, has posted in the official CL UK forums about the long awaited upcoming new drivers for the two most successful series of Soundcards. From what you can gather out of his post the new Live! drivers can be expected in a one to two weeks time frame. The Audigy drivers are to be released in August. However you can order the new installation CD for a small shipping fee right now. Also note that this new release seems to be equivalent to the drivers Compaq released in May 2002. Read more... Sound Blaster Audigy - for Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP only Sound Blaster Live - for Windows 98/98SE/ME/2000/XP only WDM Driver Version (ctaud2k.sys): 5.12.01.0244 Included applications: Creative AudioHQ v1.10.21 Creative Device Control SoundFont Control EAX Control Keyboard Speaker Configuration Creative Windows Diagnostic v2.00.16 Creative MiniDisc Center v1.01.14 Creative PlayCenter v3.01.57 Creative Recorder v2.00.24 Creative Surround Mixer v2.00.26 Creative TaskBar v1.00.26 Creative WaveStudio v4.21.07 Creative Remote Center v1.40.21 (Only applies to Platinum and Platinum eX users) We have been working for some time now on a unified driver architecture base to allow us to better support our customers needs on a more timely basis. The unified driver architecture drivers will be know as the Creative MDP (Multi-Driver Pack) and will eradicate future issues that occur between drivers and applications running on different OS's and will also support both Live! and Audigy series cards under the one driver. The key benefit of the MDP approach is that there is now only one driver and app codebase as opposed to the multiple codebases that existed previously and had to be maintained separately. This will free up development time from a majority of maintenance to a much fairer balance of more enhancement development. As you can appreciate this meant starting from the ground up and building the drivers and apps all over again from scratch. This work has taken a great deal of time, but we have recently completed the stand-alone driver and apps that are now used on our new installation CDs, which some OEMs now have and our newer products will also use. We are very aware of some outstanding issues with the Live! and Audigy based cards that have been highlighted by many users and we very much appreciate your patience while waiting for the fixes to these issues. We had a very tough choice to make. Did we work on a fix using the old codebases, but in doing so delay the release of the MDP which has so many other benefits, or build the fixes into the MDP and release the two together a little later? We decided the best approach was to forge ahead with the new architecture which will provide better long-term advantages. The great news is that these issues are indeed resolved using the new MDP approach and all that remains to be done is release a web download. Unfortunately as in all things in life this is not a simple process. Due to the vast difference in code between the old system and the new and also between the Live! codebase and the Audigy there is a further great deal of work to be done. Why? Well it's simple. The full install is over 300MB, clearly too big for anyone but T1 users to download in a reasonable timeframe, therefore we have to create update packs whcih are much smaller because they update only the parts that require changing. However due to the previous different codebases we have to create two different upgrade streams, one for Live! and one for Audigy. Once installed they will both then be 100% MDP compliant. We took the decision a little while ago to release the Live! update first. This work is now 99% complete and the download (only 50MB if you want all components, 25MB for the core components) will be available in the next week or so on our site. The work has already begun on the Audigy download and barring any major issues this should be ready around late August time. In the meantime if you are a Live! user on a modem that doesn't want to download 50MB, or if you are an Audigy user that does not want to wait for the download, we have made the full CD available for order. The CD is free of charge, but there is a very small fee of ?1.50 to cover postage. Once both downloads are available we will implement a small handling charge for the CD shipment, so if you want it - get it now. One final point is that in the past when we have released large downloads our servers have become jammed and many users have complained about dropped downloads or simply just incredibly slow download speeds. Due to the size of this download we anticipated the same flurry of activity. We have therefore listened to our users and we are investigating many options. from the simple one of adding more bandwidth, to server bandwidth sharing between our WW servers (i.e. when the U.S. is asleep Europe can use some of their bandwidth to supplement ours and vice-versa) etc, etc. However one enhancement that has already been implemented and will be used going forwards will be our implementation of a new download queueing system that allows us to provide maximum service fairly across our user base. During busy periods you may have a few minutes wait before your download begins, but once it does you will be given guranteed bandwidth at a minimum 56K modem speed. Should your connection be dropped, no problem. Log back in within 5 mins and you go straight back into the download without queueing. Our servers also support resume download apps, so if you have these you will even be able to continue the download from the point it left off. We are very pleased with the performance and stability of our new driver set and we are sure you will be too. I hope you like the plans we have put in place and have a better understanding of the implementation issues encountered. Order now - Europe - Credit Card Required