a rant about soundcards and its endless dead-time

[C Gray]

So, I ordered the Creative Sound Blaster Live! SB0060:
	a) it is an accepted EMU10K1 chipset;
	b) it is listed as supported in FreeBSD's snd_emu10kx(4) driver <https://freebsd.org/releases/11.1R/hardware.html#sound>;
	c) it does not state PCIe x4 or x8.
	d) <http://txmicro.com/creative-labs-sound-blaster-live-pci-sound-card-sb0060/>> is a typical listing, 
	    usually found leading to dead web pages, a loss-leader, or an no-return Amazon store.

	• Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! PCI Sound Card  
	• General Features:
	• Interface: PCI
	• E-mu Systems, Inc. EMU10K1 chipset
	• 64-voice hardware polyphony with E-mus patented 8-point interpolation technology
	• 48 MIDI channels with 128 GM & GS compatible instruments and 10 drum kits
	• Support for real-time digital effects like reverb, chorus, flanger,
	• pitch shifter, or distortion across any audio source
	• Capable of processing, mixing and positioning audio streams using up to 131
	• available hardware channels
	• Accelerates Microsoft DirectSound and DirectSound 3D
	• Processes bit resolutions from 4-bit to 16-bit
	• Processes sample rates from 5kHz to 48kHz
	• Hardware full duplex support enables simultaneous record and playback at
	• 8 standard sample rates
	• Utilizes AC 97 Audio Codec
	• Supports Sound Blaster MIDI and MPU-401 modes  
	• On-Board Connectors:
	• Line in
	• Microphone in
	• Line Level Out (front) / Headphone Out
	• Line Level Out (rear)
	• 15-pin MIDI / Joystick port
	• Telephone Answering Device In
	• MPC-3 Analog CD Audio In
	• MPC-3 AUX Audio In
	• SPDIF Audio In  
	• Sound Card Only (no drivers or software are included)

The search string for a card for a system only 78 years old shows how little the throwaway anti-ecology 
"high tech" (more like "high toxin") industry has people willingly expecting. The "high" stands for high profit-margin as the only motivation.

My search will never find anything, esp. given that the search engine war went to a company hell-bent on refusing the world use to its own history, knowledge, and tools:
	"Creative Sound Blaster Audigy" AND ("EMU10K2" OR "CA0100" OR "CA0101") AND "PCM" AND "MIDI" AND ("PCIe x4" OR "PCIe x8" OR "PCI-X")

I was sent the following:
Cards do NOT fit and run in any slot if the slots and card inserts are kept in the "need to know" zone.

False advertising and planned obsolescence run the industry.
That isn't why I got my ASCST and BSCS degrees in the late 1980s.

I have standardized slots for in my Dell PowerEdge T300 server as follows:
   slot 1:    3.3-V, full-length PCIe x4 with x8 connector
   slot 2:    3.3-V, full-length PCIe x4
   slot 3:    3.3-V, full-length PCIe x8
   slot 4:    3.3-V, full-length PCIe x8
   slot 5:    3.3-V, full-length PCI-X

The technology may have switched, like Apple changing connectors or the "hit factory" music industry changing media, however, the programs are worse, the computers die from bad 1/2-cent capacitor placement next to heat sources, and the music gets more PCfully-banal every day.

So, I guess I choose "none of the above".
I'll program w/o that whiney noise droning from some narcissist's beefed-up genderless lips.
Soundcards, like the "open" Apples of the II+ era, memory management, platform-independent programming, quality assurance, and scientific search engines have all been murdered because they hurt someone's feelings no doubt.

The FreeBSD list needs to actually be based in less of a Venn-diagram abstract and more in a list or real card models numbers which have been verified, but that would be documentation and QA, and science. This 1984 world of 2+2=5 with all of its labor-instensive "convenience" gives us the delusion of wisdom when we reinvent the ball over and over and over... and quite by accident.

For me, it's a choice: smash the hell out of this useless card as was done in "Office Space" to that mind-numbing printer error programmer in effigy, or, spend more life time pretending I'll solve anything besides building up Jeff Bezos' bank account and social control by circling (x,y)=(0.0) in flatland, the zero-sum of "high tech".

My question about sound?
How sound is it to ruin the future by deleting the past before its shadow even climbs out of bed?
I save money in my fleeting past to pay for stuff that lasts a shorter and shorter period BY POLICY.
The old Apple people put their feet down and started manufacturing their own cards when tech pimps kept reducing support and manuals for what you just paid for until you are buying something already outdated or broken by design.
At times like these I am embarrassed to have worked in this field and very sorry I decided to write software at all.

Sound depressed? Yes.
I apologize for the rant but working w/o a voice is slavish.
Have a better weekend than I,
chris