9 ms·

Sim Wong Hoo has died

200 points by davidchua 4y ago

Sparkyte 4y ago
He wil be missed!
scorxn 4y ago
RIP. Creative is a brand I'll love forever, having come into PC gaming in the 90's (Sound Blaster). My desktop speakers are still Creative.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
SeanLuke 4y ago
I will remember Creative as the company that purchased two of the greatest music synthesizer companies, E-Mu and Ensoniq, merged them, and then destroyed them.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- S_A_P 4y ago
  This. Creative had scale and ability to reduce costs for both E-MU and Ensoniq. These companies had extensive silicon design and fab experience (Dave Rossum is still at it in fact) that could have been leveraged and some truly innovative products could have been made. Still computer software was rapidly eating the Audio hardware market and things like samplers started to seem both redundant and one and the same thing. (Akai s5000 and Z series were basically a pc) I’m sure it was not an easy call to kill the hardware business for emu/ensoniq but I wish they hadn’t. Edit: I will also forever think of this video when I hear the name creative labs- https://youtu.be/h73kd6wsBq0 https://youtu.be/h73kd6wsBq0
  - FpUser 4y ago
    The guy is so good. Amazing.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Shades of Joe Ades, that video...
- pfheatwole 4y ago
  I will remember Creative as the company that issued repeated lawsuits against Aureal Semiconductor (losing repeatedly), then bought their assets when Aureal was forced to declare bankruptcy due to legal fees.
  - danuker 4y ago
    > losing repeatedly > bankruptcy due to legal fees. Don't the legal fees get paid by the losing side?
    - ncphil 4y ago
      Not in "the American system". Litigation is a rich person's game, and often used to grind down competitors: or just grift a lucrative settlement.
    - bdowling 4y ago
      In the American legal system, each party pays its own legal fees unless there is (1) a statute that specifies fee-shifting or (2) a contract between the parties that specifies fee-shifting. The reasoning behind this is that to require the loser to pay all fees would discourage "good" lawsuits. (e.g., an individual with a decent case against a big company, may be discouraged from filing because of the potentially catastrophic costs if he doesn't win.)
      - AndrewOMartin 4y ago
        This is presumably why American corporations typically live in such fear of individuals with a good case and modest resources. I know this isn't your idea @bdowling, and it's actually interesting to hear the reason, but I couldn't resist /s posting.
        bdowling 4y ago
        The "American Rule" also leads to many lawsuits of questionable merit being brought against corporations (and wealthy individuals). Attorneys take these cases on contingency, knowing that the defendant will likely just settle rather than incur a lot of legal fees, and the firm will take 33-40% of the settlement. These "nuisance lawsuits" are a big problem for some industries. If there was universal fee-shifting, these suits would be discouraged. It can be worse though. In some jurisdictions and for certain types of claims (e.g., employer-employee wage/hour suits in California), statutes provide for "one-way fee shifting". One-way fee-shifting means that if the plaintiff wins, the defendant pays the plaintiff's legal fees, but if the plaintiff loses, the plaintiff does not pay the defendant's legal fees. Predictably, this leads to some law firms specializing in these types of cases, taking cases on contingency, discouraging the plaintiff from settling, and racking up huge legal fees that will be paid by the defendant if they win. And the law supports this. I read one article about the California Court of Appeals upholding a $250,000 fee award in a case over $20,000 in unpaid wages.
- dylan604 4y ago
  Was E-Mu the brand with the unicorn logo? I knew a few musicians that had racks of 1RU pieces of gear. I remember the E-Mu name and the unicorn logo, and in my brain they are on the same gear. But in my brain, things get fuzzy when reaching back further than 15 minutes ago let alone 30 years.
  - alexjplant 4y ago
    That was probably MOTU (Mark of the Unicorn) which is based in Massachusetts if memory serves. I just upgraded to a MOTU interface and it's good kit. Creative apparently did some less-than-desirable things in their heyday but I was a fanboy of theirs because of their Zen and Nomad series of MP3 players. They were arguably superior to the iPod line in virtually every respect but got no recognition, i.e. a perfect combo for the technically-inclined hipster cynic that I was in my teenage years :-P
    - dylan604 4y ago
      Doh! Of course! MOTU is where I was confused. Like I said, things get fuzzy. I remember the Nomads being the defacto standard device, until iPod. I was always surprised that they stuck around for as long and new versions as it did.
    - wslh 4y ago
      I think the MP3 players from Creative were the first? Or did another device exist before that? Except, obviously the computer itself. Edit: just checked and this is a timeline, including previous devices: https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/mp3-players-throughout-history https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/mp3-players-throughout-h...
- deleted 4y ago
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- throw_m239339 4y ago
  Rossum is still doing synths and recently re-issued a SP2100, at $6000 a pop though... Hopefully he can get his brand name back. I think it was Ensoniq who were ex Commodore employees responsible for the Sid chip on the C64.
- noizejoy 4y ago
  To be fair, quite a few music synthesizer companies of that era died. Moog, Sequential, Oberheim, PPG, Synclavier, …
- reitzensteinm 4y ago
  There was also forcing EAX into Doom 3 by threatening a patent lawsuit over Carmack's Reverse, which both Creative and John Carmack independently invented. https://techreport.com/news/7113/creative-patents-carmacks-reverse/ https://techreport.com/news/7113/creative-patents-carmacks-r...
cnfernandes 4y ago
RIP. He achieved did so much, yet so little. I met him once.
- djmips 4y ago
  All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain...
rektide 4y ago
Known in the US as Creative Labs. Mercy, those Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live PCI cards (CT4830) were like the default go-to option for everyone for years & years. Every system build got one! They were reasonably priced & considered pretty decent! Motherboards had pretty bad onboard sound if any at all, up until an Nvidia chipset started sometimes having some good implementations (the nForce chipset with integrated SoundStorm, the same DSP-based chipset as on the Xbox, and boasting a very rare Dolby Digital 5.1 encoding capability), so in went a Live! (Value) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Blaster_Live https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Blaster_Live! I kept my computers in closets & ran extended HDMI & USB extension cable runs to workstations for about a decade, and the Creative Labs X-Fi Surround 5.1 Pro (SB1090) and latter X-Fi HD (SB1095) were my go to card for a long long time. Again, cheap-enough, and acceptable DACs.
- dylan604 4y ago
  The one thing about PC sound cards include SBL was in comparison to other cards they were super noisy. The hiss that came off them was much more noticeable. At the time, every Mac was much more quiet than PCs. There were a couple of PC sound cards that were much more quiet (Turtle Beach cards come to mind), but the typical Creative card sounded like it had an air leak.
- nullify88 4y ago
  Creative were also pushing Environmental Audio eXtensions (EAX) on to many games and there were several versions of the techonology requiring upgrades of the soundcard until it was killed off by the release of Windows Vista when Microsoft discontinued DirectSound3D. I believe Creative would be a very different company if EAX were still around. Their business was killed overnight.
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  As a kid from a poor family, Sound Blasters were too pricey and I ended up with something called AdLib in early 90s. Used to just beeps and screeches till then, suddenly hearing X-Wing music (not much speech, that was weakness of it) playing actual music from loudspeakers was shocking.
baybal2 4y ago
One of very few Singaporean semi companies which made it. The only one I would list second to it would be Espressif, which makes ESP8266 and ESP32. I lived in Singapore as a student 2007-2009.
- microtonal 4y ago
  I thought Espressif is Chinese? Their company history seems to indicate that they were founded in Shanghai: https://www.espressif.com/en/company/about-us/milestones https://www.espressif.com/en/company/about-us/milestones
  - xuki 4y ago
    The founder is Singaporean.
Dalewyn 4y ago
Practically every computer geek/nerd of the 80s and 90s has come across and used a Sound Blaster at some point. Part of our childhoods, as the saying goes. RIP, not many get to affect quite as many people as Creative did across entire generations.
- virgulino 4y ago
  It wasn't just sound. The second generation SoundBlasters had a proprietary CD-ROM controller integrated, this was not yet standardized, it was before the IDE CD-ROM. It was the birth of the CD-ROM, and of Multimedia itself, as a product. In the early 90's we used to buy a boxed "Multimedia Kit" from Creative, with SoundBlaster, CD-ROM drive and speakers. Very popular and the best way to "add multimedia" to your computer, and enter the new world of multimedia and massive data, like encyclopedias, and CD-ROM games like Myst. I remember the excitement. https://64.media.tumblr.com/57f25b53fd58e3bad9cf1959f49a82f8/7a3201673cdd2657-9e/s1280x1920/79be0fc3132025a6c47a962b8dbc92d9c657d0b3.jpg https://64.media.tumblr.com/57f25b53fd58e3bad9cf1959f49a82f8...
  - vanderZwan 4y ago
    Oh man that's a nostalgia trip. I remember us getting an AWE32, a CD-ROM player and Encarta 95. And then after installing everything you open to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxNsIBJOAA8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxNsIBJOAA8 Absolutely magical to eleven-year old me. Too bad I couldn't read English very well yet, since in the Netherlands they only started teaching that around the same age at the time.
- npteljes 4y ago
  I was gifted with a paper notebook that has a 3d effect PCB printed on it as its cover. From the chips' inscriptions, I found the source, and it's a Sound Blaster sound card :) Best gift ever. Not my image, but I have the same one: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/pcb-notebook--541065342711278169/ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/pcb-notebook--5410653427112781...
- Manjuuu 4y ago
  When soundcards were cool like GPUs are now, great times.
throw_m239339 4y ago
Now maybe Creative can give EMU and Ensoniq trademarks back to their creators.
carimura 4y ago
RIP. I spent countless hours talking to that damn parrot.
- goldcd 4y ago
  And DrSbaitso
dainiusse 4y ago
RIP. Like many, was a sound blaster buyer in 90s and still have 5.1 sound system :)
hendry 4y ago
Funny that my Dad and I bought the Creative Game blaster from a Singapore market (likely Sim Lim) and bought that back to South Africa. It was a revelation to play Sierra games sound through it. Decades later I now live in Singapore. =)
- lokedhs 4y ago
  When I was a kid in Sweden back then I didn't know it was a Singapore company. Now that I have also live in Singapore, I learned quickly that it was local, as it's very well regarded here.
senttoschool 4y ago
I remember changing from my motherboard's onboard sound to a Creative Audigy 4. Wow. It was like going from 200/200 vision to 20/20 overnight. The clarity was amazing.
ChrisArchitect 4y ago
"Creative Technology"? I thought it was called Creative Labs?
- sohkamyung 4y ago
  From Wikipedia [1] > Creative Technology Ltd. is a Singaporean multinational technology company. [...] The company also has overseas offices in Shanghai, Tokyo, Dublin and the Silicon Valley (where in the US it is known as Creative Labs). It is listed on the Singapore Exchange (SGX). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Technology
swyx 4y ago
a full year before the iPod, I remember getting the Creative Nomad Jukebox (https://www.iretron.com/blog/posts/technology-flashback-creative-nomad-jukebox-2000/ https://www.iretron.com/blog/posts/technology-flashback-crea...) with its whopping 6GB of space and showing it off at school. it had a great display and the icons on the physical buttons were worn off from me pressing them. more importantly as a kid from a tiny country, Mr. Sim and Creative Technologies showed promise that you could make an impact in the global tech scene and become a billionaire without being in real estate or oil or some other calcified industry. thank you and RIP.
- creamyhorror 4y ago
  Good old Nomad Jukebox and Zen Touch (loved them) and the Soundblaster cards of the '90s. It's too bad Mr. Sim didn't manage to tack the right course to keep Creative a continuing player in personal entertainment devices and then smartphones. Maybe it was a failure to hire/empower people with the right strategic vision, amidst dramatic changes in consumer preferences. RIP Mr. Sim and thanks for inspiring us Singaporeans to dream bigger.
- bayindirh 4y ago
  Some of their Jukeboxes have great sound quality and character. I still have a Muvo^2 (Square) which has a very nice character of its own. Their Gigaworks speakers also very nice. I have their T20 series II and it's sound stage is amazing for its size. I have used their Live!, Audigy and Audigy2 ZS cards, which were sounded nice for their time. However, I still won't forgive them for being strictly Windows only and refusing to cooperate with Linux explicitly. I now have an Asus Xonar D2X, and this thing sings, and it has native Linux support.
- sbarre 4y ago
  In the late 90s I had a little 32MB(!) Creative Nomad player that I carried around in my pocket for a long time in the early days of MP3s... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Creative_Nomad_MP3_Player.JPG https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Creative_Nomad_MP3_P... This was the first thing I owned that really felt like it was from the future.
zitstif 4y ago
[dead]
kristopolous 4y ago
He was under 70, any word on cause of death?
rurban 4y ago
I've rather used the Gravis Ultrasound Max, the better variant of the simple soundblasters, which had hardware soundtables then, patchsets, and Doom support. I've created a lot of Doom VR those times with this card. Good old cheap VR times
noizejoy 4y ago
Creative Labs also made one of the strangest keyboard keyboard (not a typo) contraptions, the Prodikeys[0] [0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Creative+Labs+ProdiKeys&t=h_&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Creative+Labs+ProdiKeys&t=h_&iax=i...
- pan69 4y ago
  In action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h73kd6wsBq0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h73kd6wsBq0
  - nly 4y ago
    "Shut up and take my money" material there for parents.
  - vanderZwan 4y ago
    Wait, is that Sim Wong Hoo himself? It's kind of hard to tell at the 240p resolution.
    - nerpderp82 4y ago
      No the guy in the Keyboard Rock Drummer ads is Paul Seow.
- boboche 4y ago
  Still got mine here in a box with my SB live 5.1. That thing was a blast to mess around with as a kid, but not really practical for anything semi-pro compared to just pluging a midi keyboard due to the limited number of keys. Had a Yamaha PSS (451?) which was a tad better but the key size being smaller than a regular piano was also an issue. Couldn’t get rid of that keyboard tho, its epic :)
cyberjunkie 4y ago
Best known for their sound solutions, Creative even made graphics cards in the early 2000s. The Creative GeForce 2 Ultra, with its bright green RAM heatsinks! What a tasteful looking (and performing) card that was.
noisy_boy 4y ago
Creative Technology shares jumped[0] by 25% after the news. Can anybody share more on the reasoning? Was he being seen as a founder who was holding the company back? [0]: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/creative-sim-wong-hoo-shares-spike-death-stocks-3184436?cid=internal_sharetool_androidphone_05012023_cna https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/creative-sim-wong-h...
- swyx 4y ago
  i wouldnt read too much into it. it's now a $100m market cap, basically a penny stock. at that level any media mention leads to random spikes from boiler room types edit: browsing a bit turned up this thing: > According to the company’s most recent annual report, for FY2022 ended June, Sim held 33.1 per cent of Creative. He was also the only substantial shareholder. > The Singapore Code on Take-overs and Mergers requires anyone acquiring 30 per cent or more of the voting rights of a company to extend an offer for all other shares in the company.
bergheim 4y ago
Wow. I will always remember when I got the AWE32. I had a SB16 which was still great before that. I switched to the AWE32, and remember fighting with my computer get any audio going at all, and wanting to play Day of the Tentacle [1] with this new upgraded magic. After messing around with config.sys and autoexec.bat for hours thinking this was some kind of IRQ "LOTR issue I would defeat", I found my speaker to be just not plugged in correctly. Fixed that in shame. I then started to play DOTT in AWE. One of my best memories growing up. RIP. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BRXmgcBHBM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BRXmgcBHBM
KRAKRISMOTT 4y ago
Is HN going to be black barred for this?
ofrzeta 4y ago
What kind of obituary is this? Ending in a stock exchange report "As at 9.09am, shares in Creative Technology are trading 9 cents higher or 6.38% up at $1.50" Tasteless.
haspok 4y ago
I remember Creative as the company that killed Adlib, by making sure Yamaha wouldn't ship its new OPL3 chip until Creative would be ready with its sound card too. No question that the guy was a talented and ruthless businessman, but I will not shed a tear for him.

200 points by davidchua 4y ago

He wil be missed!

RIP. Creative is a brand I'll love forever, having come into PC gaming in the 90's (Sound Blaster). My desktop speakers are still Creative.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

SeanLuke 4y ago

I will remember Creative as the company that purchased two of the greatest music synthesizer companies, E-Mu and Ensoniq, merged them, and then destroyed them.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
S_A_P 4y ago
This. Creative had scale and ability to reduce costs for both E-MU and Ensoniq. These companies had extensive silicon design and fab experience (Dave Rossum is still at it in fact) that could have been leveraged and some truly innovative products could have been made. Still computer software was rapidly eating the Audio hardware market and things like samplers started to seem both redundant and one and the same thing. (Akai s5000 and Z series were basically a pc) I’m sure it was not an easy call to kill the hardware business for emu/ensoniq but I wish they hadn’t. Edit: I will also forever think of this video when I hear the name creative labs- https://youtu.be/h73kd6wsBq0 https://youtu.be/h73kd6wsBq0
- FpUser 4y ago
  The guy is so good. Amazing.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Shades of Joe Ades, that video...
pfheatwole 4y ago
I will remember Creative as the company that issued repeated lawsuits against Aureal Semiconductor (losing repeatedly), then bought their assets when Aureal was forced to declare bankruptcy due to legal fees.
- danuker 4y ago
  > losing repeatedly > bankruptcy due to legal fees. Don't the legal fees get paid by the losing side?
  - ncphil 4y ago
    Not in "the American system". Litigation is a rich person's game, and often used to grind down competitors: or just grift a lucrative settlement.
  - bdowling 4y ago
    In the American legal system, each party pays its own legal fees unless there is (1) a statute that specifies fee-shifting or (2) a contract between the parties that specifies fee-shifting. The reasoning behind this is that to require the loser to pay all fees would discourage "good" lawsuits. (e.g., an individual with a decent case against a big company, may be discouraged from filing because of the potentially catastrophic costs if he doesn't win.)
    - AndrewOMartin 4y ago
      This is presumably why American corporations typically live in such fear of individuals with a good case and modest resources. I know this isn't your idea @bdowling, and it's actually interesting to hear the reason, but I couldn't resist /s posting.
      - bdowling 4y ago
        The "American Rule" also leads to many lawsuits of questionable merit being brought against corporations (and wealthy individuals). Attorneys take these cases on contingency, knowing that the defendant will likely just settle rather than incur a lot of legal fees, and the firm will take 33-40% of the settlement. These "nuisance lawsuits" are a big problem for some industries. If there was universal fee-shifting, these suits would be discouraged. It can be worse though. In some jurisdictions and for certain types of claims (e.g., employer-employee wage/hour suits in California), statutes provide for "one-way fee shifting". One-way fee-shifting means that if the plaintiff wins, the defendant pays the plaintiff's legal fees, but if the plaintiff loses, the plaintiff does not pay the defendant's legal fees. Predictably, this leads to some law firms specializing in these types of cases, taking cases on contingency, discouraging the plaintiff from settling, and racking up huge legal fees that will be paid by the defendant if they win. And the law supports this. I read one article about the California Court of Appeals upholding a $250,000 fee award in a case over $20,000 in unpaid wages.
dylan604 4y ago
Was E-Mu the brand with the unicorn logo? I knew a few musicians that had racks of 1RU pieces of gear. I remember the E-Mu name and the unicorn logo, and in my brain they are on the same gear. But in my brain, things get fuzzy when reaching back further than 15 minutes ago let alone 30 years.
- alexjplant 4y ago
  That was probably MOTU (Mark of the Unicorn) which is based in Massachusetts if memory serves. I just upgraded to a MOTU interface and it's good kit. Creative apparently did some less-than-desirable things in their heyday but I was a fanboy of theirs because of their Zen and Nomad series of MP3 players. They were arguably superior to the iPod line in virtually every respect but got no recognition, i.e. a perfect combo for the technically-inclined hipster cynic that I was in my teenage years :-P
  - dylan604 4y ago
    Doh! Of course! MOTU is where I was confused. Like I said, things get fuzzy. I remember the Nomads being the defacto standard device, until iPod. I was always surprised that they stuck around for as long and new versions as it did.
  - wslh 4y ago
    I think the MP3 players from Creative were the first? Or did another device exist before that? Except, obviously the computer itself. Edit: just checked and this is a timeline, including previous devices: https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/mp3-players-throughout-history https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/mp3-players-throughout-h...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
throw_m239339 4y ago
Rossum is still doing synths and recently re-issued a SP2100, at $6000 a pop though... Hopefully he can get his brand name back. I think it was Ensoniq who were ex Commodore employees responsible for the Sid chip on the C64.
noizejoy 4y ago
To be fair, quite a few music synthesizer companies of that era died. Moog, Sequential, Oberheim, PPG, Synclavier, …
reitzensteinm 4y ago
There was also forcing EAX into Doom 3 by threatening a patent lawsuit over Carmack's Reverse, which both Creative and John Carmack independently invented. https://techreport.com/news/7113/creative-patents-carmacks-reverse/ https://techreport.com/news/7113/creative-patents-carmacks-r...

cnfernandes 4y ago

RIP. He achieved did so much, yet so little. I met him once.

djmips 4y ago
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain...

rektide 4y ago

Known in the US as Creative Labs. Mercy, those Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live PCI cards (CT4830) were like the default go-to option for everyone for years & years. Every system build got one! They were reasonably priced & considered pretty decent! Motherboards had pretty bad onboard sound if any at all, up until an Nvidia chipset started sometimes having some good implementations (the nForce chipset with integrated SoundStorm, the same DSP-based chipset as on the Xbox, and boasting a very rare Dolby Digital 5.1 encoding capability), so in went a Live! (Value) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Blaster_Live https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Blaster_Live! I kept my computers in closets & ran extended HDMI & USB extension cable runs to workstations for about a decade, and the Creative Labs X-Fi Surround 5.1 Pro (SB1090) and latter X-Fi HD (SB1095) were my go to card for a long long time. Again, cheap-enough, and acceptable DACs.

dylan604 4y ago
The one thing about PC sound cards include SBL was in comparison to other cards they were super noisy. The hiss that came off them was much more noticeable. At the time, every Mac was much more quiet than PCs. There were a couple of PC sound cards that were much more quiet (Turtle Beach cards come to mind), but the typical Creative card sounded like it had an air leak.
nullify88 4y ago
Creative were also pushing Environmental Audio eXtensions (EAX) on to many games and there were several versions of the techonology requiring upgrades of the soundcard until it was killed off by the release of Windows Vista when Microsoft discontinued DirectSound3D. I believe Creative would be a very different company if EAX were still around. Their business was killed overnight.
saiya-jin 4y ago
As a kid from a poor family, Sound Blasters were too pricey and I ended up with something called AdLib in early 90s. Used to just beeps and screeches till then, suddenly hearing X-Wing music (not much speech, that was weakness of it) playing actual music from loudspeakers was shocking.

baybal2 4y ago

One of very few Singaporean semi companies which made it. The only one I would list second to it would be Espressif, which makes ESP8266 and ESP32. I lived in Singapore as a student 2007-2009.

microtonal 4y ago
I thought Espressif is Chinese? Their company history seems to indicate that they were founded in Shanghai: https://www.espressif.com/en/company/about-us/milestones https://www.espressif.com/en/company/about-us/milestones
- xuki 4y ago
  The founder is Singaporean.

Dalewyn 4y ago

Practically every computer geek/nerd of the 80s and 90s has come across and used a Sound Blaster at some point. Part of our childhoods, as the saying goes. RIP, not many get to affect quite as many people as Creative did across entire generations.

virgulino 4y ago
It wasn't just sound. The second generation SoundBlasters had a proprietary CD-ROM controller integrated, this was not yet standardized, it was before the IDE CD-ROM. It was the birth of the CD-ROM, and of Multimedia itself, as a product. In the early 90's we used to buy a boxed "Multimedia Kit" from Creative, with SoundBlaster, CD-ROM drive and speakers. Very popular and the best way to "add multimedia" to your computer, and enter the new world of multimedia and massive data, like encyclopedias, and CD-ROM games like Myst. I remember the excitement. https://64.media.tumblr.com/57f25b53fd58e3bad9cf1959f49a82f8/7a3201673cdd2657-9e/s1280x1920/79be0fc3132025a6c47a962b8dbc92d9c657d0b3.jpg https://64.media.tumblr.com/57f25b53fd58e3bad9cf1959f49a82f8...
- vanderZwan 4y ago
  Oh man that's a nostalgia trip. I remember us getting an AWE32, a CD-ROM player and Encarta 95. And then after installing everything you open to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxNsIBJOAA8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxNsIBJOAA8 Absolutely magical to eleven-year old me. Too bad I couldn't read English very well yet, since in the Netherlands they only started teaching that around the same age at the time.
npteljes 4y ago
I was gifted with a paper notebook that has a 3d effect PCB printed on it as its cover. From the chips' inscriptions, I found the source, and it's a Sound Blaster sound card :) Best gift ever. Not my image, but I have the same one: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/pcb-notebook--541065342711278169/ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/pcb-notebook--5410653427112781...
Manjuuu 4y ago
When soundcards were cool like GPUs are now, great times.

throw_m239339 4y ago

Now maybe Creative can give EMU and Ensoniq trademarks back to their creators.

carimura 4y ago

RIP. I spent countless hours talking to that damn parrot.

goldcd 4y ago
And DrSbaitso

dainiusse 4y ago

RIP. Like many, was a sound blaster buyer in 90s and still have 5.1 sound system :)

hendry 4y ago

Funny that my Dad and I bought the Creative Game blaster from a Singapore market (likely Sim Lim) and bought that back to South Africa. It was a revelation to play Sierra games sound through it. Decades later I now live in Singapore. =)

lokedhs 4y ago
When I was a kid in Sweden back then I didn't know it was a Singapore company. Now that I have also live in Singapore, I learned quickly that it was local, as it's very well regarded here.

senttoschool 4y ago

I remember changing from my motherboard's onboard sound to a Creative Audigy 4. Wow. It was like going from 200/200 vision to 20/20 overnight. The clarity was amazing.

ChrisArchitect 4y ago

"Creative Technology"? I thought it was called Creative Labs?

sohkamyung 4y ago
From Wikipedia [1] > Creative Technology Ltd. is a Singaporean multinational technology company. [...] The company also has overseas offices in Shanghai, Tokyo, Dublin and the Silicon Valley (where in the US it is known as Creative Labs). It is listed on the Singapore Exchange (SGX). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Technology

swyx 4y ago

a full year before the iPod, I remember getting the Creative Nomad Jukebox (https://www.iretron.com/blog/posts/technology-flashback-creative-nomad-jukebox-2000/ https://www.iretron.com/blog/posts/technology-flashback-crea...) with its whopping 6GB of space and showing it off at school. it had a great display and the icons on the physical buttons were worn off from me pressing them. more importantly as a kid from a tiny country, Mr. Sim and Creative Technologies showed promise that you could make an impact in the global tech scene and become a billionaire without being in real estate or oil or some other calcified industry. thank you and RIP.

creamyhorror 4y ago
Good old Nomad Jukebox and Zen Touch (loved them) and the Soundblaster cards of the '90s. It's too bad Mr. Sim didn't manage to tack the right course to keep Creative a continuing player in personal entertainment devices and then smartphones. Maybe it was a failure to hire/empower people with the right strategic vision, amidst dramatic changes in consumer preferences. RIP Mr. Sim and thanks for inspiring us Singaporeans to dream bigger.
bayindirh 4y ago
Some of their Jukeboxes have great sound quality and character. I still have a Muvo^2 (Square) which has a very nice character of its own. Their Gigaworks speakers also very nice. I have their T20 series II and it's sound stage is amazing for its size. I have used their Live!, Audigy and Audigy2 ZS cards, which were sounded nice for their time. However, I still won't forgive them for being strictly Windows only and refusing to cooperate with Linux explicitly. I now have an Asus Xonar D2X, and this thing sings, and it has native Linux support.
sbarre 4y ago
In the late 90s I had a little 32MB(!) Creative Nomad player that I carried around in my pocket for a long time in the early days of MP3s... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Creative_Nomad_MP3_Player.JPG https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Creative_Nomad_MP3_P... This was the first thing I owned that really felt like it was from the future.

zitstif 4y ago

[dead]

kristopolous 4y ago

He was under 70, any word on cause of death?

rurban 4y ago

I've rather used the Gravis Ultrasound Max, the better variant of the simple soundblasters, which had hardware soundtables then, patchsets, and Doom support. I've created a lot of Doom VR those times with this card. Good old cheap VR times

noizejoy 4y ago

Creative Labs also made one of the strangest keyboard keyboard (not a typo) contraptions, the Prodikeys[0] [0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Creative+Labs+ProdiKeys&t=h_&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Creative+Labs+ProdiKeys&t=h_&iax=i...

pan69 4y ago
In action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h73kd6wsBq0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h73kd6wsBq0
- nly 4y ago
  "Shut up and take my money" material there for parents.
- vanderZwan 4y ago
  Wait, is that Sim Wong Hoo himself? It's kind of hard to tell at the 240p resolution.
  - nerpderp82 4y ago
    No the guy in the Keyboard Rock Drummer ads is Paul Seow.
boboche 4y ago
Still got mine here in a box with my SB live 5.1. That thing was a blast to mess around with as a kid, but not really practical for anything semi-pro compared to just pluging a midi keyboard due to the limited number of keys. Had a Yamaha PSS (451?) which was a tad better but the key size being smaller than a regular piano was also an issue. Couldn’t get rid of that keyboard tho, its epic :)

cyberjunkie 4y ago

Best known for their sound solutions, Creative even made graphics cards in the early 2000s. The Creative GeForce 2 Ultra, with its bright green RAM heatsinks! What a tasteful looking (and performing) card that was.

noisy_boy 4y ago

Creative Technology shares jumped[0] by 25% after the news. Can anybody share more on the reasoning? Was he being seen as a founder who was holding the company back? [0]: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/creative-sim-wong-hoo-shares-spike-death-stocks-3184436?cid=internal_sharetool_androidphone_05012023_cna https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/creative-sim-wong-h...

swyx 4y ago
i wouldnt read too much into it. it's now a $100m market cap, basically a penny stock. at that level any media mention leads to random spikes from boiler room types edit: browsing a bit turned up this thing: > According to the company’s most recent annual report, for FY2022 ended June, Sim held 33.1 per cent of Creative. He was also the only substantial shareholder. > The Singapore Code on Take-overs and Mergers requires anyone acquiring 30 per cent or more of the voting rights of a company to extend an offer for all other shares in the company.

bergheim 4y ago

Wow. I will always remember when I got the AWE32. I had a SB16 which was still great before that. I switched to the AWE32, and remember fighting with my computer get any audio going at all, and wanting to play Day of the Tentacle [1] with this new upgraded magic. After messing around with config.sys and autoexec.bat for hours thinking this was some kind of IRQ "LOTR issue I would defeat", I found my speaker to be just not plugged in correctly. Fixed that in shame. I then started to play DOTT in AWE. One of my best memories growing up. RIP. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BRXmgcBHBM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BRXmgcBHBM

KRAKRISMOTT 4y ago

Is HN going to be black barred for this?

ofrzeta 4y ago

What kind of obituary is this? Ending in a stock exchange report "As at 9.09am, shares in Creative Technology are trading 9 cents higher or 6.38% up at $1.50" Tasteless.

haspok 4y ago

I remember Creative as the company that killed Adlib, by making sure Yamaha wouldn't ship its new OPL3 chip until Creative would be ready with its sound card too. No question that the guy was a talented and ruthless businessman, but I will not shed a tear for him.