I am starting to HATE Creative Play Centre

Zak33 · Post by **Zak33** » Wed Feb 20, 2002 5:38 pm

I got it with my Audigy, and it lets down this card. Fantastic Hardware, but not good software AT ALL.
Is it just me, but the following P1$$ M3 0ff big time.

Play Centre Boots up slow as hell
I cant work out how to change Album Names Simply
I can then cant then can again Delete Albums from the Play List
It locks up my CD player regular as clock work
It takes age to Boot Down
It seems to remember the wrong last track
It is illogical in use

I hate it.

Very much

What is better? Help

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Wed Feb 20, 2002 5:44 pm

I don't use any of that - never installed it on my SBLive. It's poorly coded and a resource hog. It loads like 5 or 6 background apps which is rediculous.

WHY use their player when there's better ones around?

I use Winamp to play MP3s and CDs and it has full equalization. Windows Media Player 7.x also works okay. Both support playlists.

I don't care about the spatial stuff and if I DO need to make adjustments, you can (at least on the SBLive) load just the 3D Spacial settings app and then close it when you finish with it.

Hipnotic_Tranz · Post by **Hipnotic_Tranz** » Wed Feb 20, 2002 10:19 pm

I do the exact same as with FP here. I just use MediaPlayer for all my MP3's/divx movies. Use my ATI software for mpegs

. I used to use napster for mp3s (cause it would load them all and was easy to make playlists, just click on any song, etc) but now that they are down you can't connect to the server so it's impossible to even run... sad really. I loved how Napster would load all the Mp3s and I could just peruse them easily. And it didn't take up a lot of resources either, if i remember correctly...

Zak33 · Post by **Zak33** » Thu Feb 21, 2002 3:15 am

But WHY is it so bad?

I have tried EVERY THING to us eit.I like the other stuff, like the mixer, and the EAX and the Spoeaker tests/setting etc

Just the media player is CACK!

grrrrr

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Thu Feb 21, 2002 8:08 am

Creative has never been reknown for their software. You want to see something aweful? The MP3 encoder that came with my SBLibe MP3+ was a total JOKE. Worst piece of code I've ever seen.

Despite the fact that it supposedly used "Hardware acceleration" on the card, I could actually get faster encoding from Audiograbber using the Lame encoder DLL. Also you had absolutely NO bit rate selection - they defaulted to 128 and that's all you get. P.O.S.

Another stellar crap Creative app is the manager software for their Nomad MP3 player.

nexus_7 · Post by **nexus_7** » Thu Feb 21, 2002 11:49 am

I always hit the Drivers only button when installing. Why bother.

Greg

SuperDave · Post by **SuperDave** » Thu Feb 21, 2002 12:00 pm

Within 48 hours of installing my first SB Live, I had removed all extraneous crap and have gone Drivers Only ever since. Creative, IMO, closely follows AOL and RealPlayer in its' unauthorized and excessive use of system resources.

Hipnotic_Tranz · Post by **Hipnotic_Tranz** » Thu Feb 21, 2002 4:41 pm

I like some of their software. Their wavecenter is nice, you can easily edit wav files, add echoes, fade in/out, etc. Everything else is basically crap. I installed their mixer and the Remote Center (for my live drive), oh and their recorder (it's better than windows 'ol recorder

) and thats it. All that audioHQ shit, EAX demos... c'mon, who ever uses 'em. Waste of hard drive space if you ask me...

VidmanII · Post by **VidmanII** » Fri Feb 22, 2002 11:56 pm

I've got a "No Creative Zone" sign here at my house.

knightofnee1112 · Post by **knightofnee1112** » Sat Feb 23, 2002 3:55 am

ive got playcenter2 installed, sucks really bad, i think my ram recovery program said it too up 14 megs of ram! if you ask me thats really bad, it shoudl be mroe like 400KB to 2MB not 14MB. playcenter2 does diskaccess WAY too much too, after i close the program those 14meg's aren't freed! like flying-P said its poorly written. im not sure what a good alternative woudl be, im still looking myself. winamp seems like it may be good. ( http://www.winamp.com )

GOOD LUCK!