Sim Wong Hoo has died

Sim Wong Hoo has died(theedgesingapore.com)

200 points by davidchua 3 years ago | 66 comments

Dalewyn 3 years 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 3 years 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...

vanderZwan 3 years 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

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 3 years 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--5410653427112781...

Manjuuu 3 years ago | |

When soundcards were cool like GPUs are now, great times.

rektide 3 years 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!

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 3 years 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 3 years 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 3 years 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.

rektide 3 years ago | | |

I remember the SB Live Value being like $65, although it's beem around for a couple years when I was in my system-building-for-friends years.

scorxn 3 years 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.

swyx 3 years ago |

a full year before the iPod, I remember getting the Creative Nomad Jukebox (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.

sbarre 3 years 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_P...

This was the first thing I owned that really felt like it was from the future.

HNDen21 3 years ago | | |

I had a RIO 300.. then later got the 500... would compress to wma 64 K so I could load a decent amount of songs.....

bayindirh 3 years 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.

creamyhorror 3 years 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.

grendelt 3 years ago | |

I wanted one of those so bad. I opted for the Diamond Rio CD Player (SP250)

I loved that thing. That was an exciting time in tech because prices were falling into the affordable range for a lot of portable/mobile tech. (It was clunky and prohibitively expensive prior to that.)

hendry 3 years 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 3 years 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.

noizejoy 3 years 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=i...

pan69 3 years ago | |

In action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h73kd6wsBq0

vanderZwan 3 years ago | | |

Wait, is that Sim Wong Hoo himself? It's kind of hard to tell at the 240p resolution.

nly 3 years ago | | |

"Shut up and take my money" material there for parents.

boboche 3 years 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 :)

bergheim 3 years 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

cyberjunkie 3 years 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 3 years 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-h...

swyx 3 years 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.

haspok 3 years 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.

kristopolous 3 years ago |

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

rurban 3 years 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

dainiusse 3 years ago |

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

ofrzeta 3 years 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.

senttoschool 3 years 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.

carimura 3 years ago |

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

goldcd 3 years ago | |

And DrSbaitso

ChrisArchitect 3 years ago |

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

sohkamyung 3 years 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

Sparkyte 3 years ago |

He wil be missed!

KRAKRISMOTT 3 years ago |

Is HN going to be black barred for this?

SeanLuke 3 years 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.

baybal2 3 years 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 3 years 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

xuki 3 years ago | | |

The founder is Singaporean.

throw_m239339 3 years ago |

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

cnfernandes 3 years ago |

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

djmips 3 years ago | |

All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain...