This post is about a small exchange of emails between me and Creative customer support. I've removed names but I've given the full text. It's from 2006.
Tril email 1 wrote:Detailed Problem Description:
The specifications of the card says the
following :
ASIO 2.0 support: 16-bit/44.1kHz, 16-bit/48kHz,
24-bit/44.1kHz, 24-bit/48kHz and 24-bit/96kHz
with direct monitoring
I'm an ASIO host programmer and I need ASIO IN to
work at 16-bit/48kHz for my host. There is an
option in the drivers to set the frequency to
48kHz but I don't see an option to set the sample
type to 16-bit. How do I set the ASIO sample
type to 16-bit?
Thank you. I look forward to an answer.
Customer support reply 1 wrote:Dear Tril,
Thank you for contacting Creative Technical Support; we appreciate the
opportunity to assist you.
With regards to your enquiry, I would like you to refer to the following
knowledge base article for more information:
Title: ASIO - General Information and Essential Troubleshooting
Link: http://us.creative.com/support/kb/artic ... 3&sid=2378" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
I hope that this information is helpful and will be looking forward to
your response/feedback.
If you still require assistance, please reply to this email with any
previous correspondence to ensure the quickest and most accurate
service.
Best Regards
Technical Support
Creative Labs Americas
Tril email 2 wrote:I'm sorry but this information does not respond to my question. On previous sound cards from Creative that supported 16-bit and 24-bit, there were two different ASIO drivers (one for 16 bit and another for 24-bit). The X-Fi
has only one ASIO driver. The ASIO driver of the X-Fi is called "Creative ASIO". This driver seems to be fixed at 24-bit but the specifications of the X-Fi mention support for ASIO at 16-bit. This is contradictory. I'm particularly interested into having ASIO IN work at 16-bit.
If it is possible to set the ASIO IN to 16-bit, I wish to learn how.
If it is not possible to set the ASIO IN to 16-bit, the specifications are misleading and I would like an explanation of what was meant by mentionning 16-bit support.
Thank you for taking the time of reading the whole explanation.
I was trying to add support for the X-Fi sound card in a program I was writing at the time. My program needed samples in 16 bit. The X-Fi specification said that it supported 16 bit and 24 bit. I noticed that the X-Fi ASIO driver was working at 24 bit and it was putting the 24 bit samples in a variable of 32 bit. At the time, I though there might be some way to tell the Creative ASIO driver to switch to 16 bit and give me 16 bit samples in 16 bit variables. That would have been the easiest solution for me. Now, I don't think that it's possible. I think that the card always works at 24 bit and I think that the specification says that it supports 16 bit because commercial ASIO software has 24 bit to 16 bit conversion built-in. What I needed was a reply from a programmer from Creative telling me how the 24 bit samples were stored in 32 bit and how to convert that to 16 bit.Customer support email 2 wrote:Dear Tril,
Thank you for reaching us at Creative Email Technical Support; we
appreciate the opportunity to assist you.
I understand you are having trouble with the ASIO driver settings on
your Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic soundcard.
I apologize that the provided information did not assist you.
I would like to know what program you are using when trying to adjust
the ASIO drivers. Are you using Creative's Audio Creation software? Are
you using a third-party software program, if so what program?
Lastly, I would also like to know what leads you to believe that when
you set the driver to 48kHz, it is NOT using 16-bit. If the settings are
grayed out and show 24-bit or something along these lines, please
respond with this information. Otherwise, what indicates to you that
16-bit is not being applied?
Once we receive your reply, we will be better equipped to assist you.
I thank you, again, for contacting Creative Email Support.
If you still require assistance, please reply to this email with any
previous correspondence to ensure the quickest and most accurate
service.
Best Regards,
Technical Support
Creative Labs Americas
After that small email exchange, I gave up. Maybe I could have gotten what I wanted if I persevered but it was not worth wasting my time. I did not have an X-Fi (I was adding support for a freeware program I wanted to share with others) so I did not mind too much if it did not work well.
The customer support experience was still good even if it did not answer my questions. They were always very polite and trying to solve the problem. The issue if that it looked liked they did not really read what I was saying. I'm thinking it's more likely that they simply did not understand because this question falls out of their expertise. They have no idea of the internal workings of the ASIO drivers, they are just customer support. That's what I don't like about that kind of customer support. They are there to help but they only know the answers to basic questions. It's a nonsense because, if you have a basic question, you'll figure it out yourself without asking the question (at least, that's what I do). You will only resort to customer support for really hard to answer questions and that's when they won't know what to reply.
If this was a small company with less than 20 employees, the message would have gotten through to the people with the correct answers. With companies with hundred of employees and offices in many countries, it's much less likely that your question will get deep enough in the company to get a reply from someone with the knowledge to answer you correctly.
Share your stories. I'm sure there are plenty of people here with inadequate customer support from big companies.