a rant about soundcards and its endless dead-time

[Eric Joyner]

Why not just get a PCI-E sound card in the first place? I don't know why
someone would go out of their way to get a PCI one in 2018.

- Eric

On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 8:20 PM C Gray <frankfenderbender at council124.org>
wrote:

> 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
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-questions at freebsd.org mailing list
> https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "
> freebsd-questions-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
>