The best PC soundcards were made in 1999.

"mrbog" wrote in message

As stated, no audio card today (afaik) has a 4x or 2x amplified out
port. I was happy with my soundcard in 1999,

Happy with the pathetic little amp's 5% distortion ?

Fortunately an onboard amp is not generally a criteria these days.

geoff

"mrbog" wrote in message
Yea, solve my problem of idiot posters responding in a ratio of 5 to
1. I need to hear my PC all the time. Even if I didn't, how annoying
would it be to reach behind my desk and flip a switch every time I
needed to hear anything, and then again after I was done. You call
that a solution?

Why not just leave it on ?

geoff

On 31 Oct 2004 14:36:19 -0800, (mrbog) wrote:


Payne: Eh? Video cards now sometimes have fans, so if you want a
noisy one,
get one of those:-)

Hello? We're talking about audio devices here. When I say it's quite
I'm not talking about the circuit board I'm talking about the AUDIO
OUTPUT, ****HEAD.


You said: "The best video cards were made in 1999. Now they're all
patheticlly quiet."

I know it was a misprint. But I'm allowed some fun. ****head :-=)

On 1 Nov 2004 10:07:51 -0800, (mrbog) wrote:


Yea, solve my problem of idiot posters responding in a ratio of 5 to
1. I need to hear my PC all the time. Even if I didn't, how annoying
would it be to reach behind my desk and flip a switch every time I
needed to hear anything, and then again after I was done. You call
that a solution?

Sure. Why not? You want a device on - turn it on. You want to save
power - turn it off. The device you need is called a "switch".

You'll get no serious replies, now you've shown yourself up as a prat.
But we may play with you a little further :=-)

On Mon, 01 Nov 2004 11:29:21 -0800, mrbog wrote:

Well you response was at least an attempt to help, thanks. Like everyone
else, you're wrong and don't have a solution, but you tried.

.... and you don't try to help yourself, just pooh-pooh the responses that
you get. No wonder all the responses directed at you get more and more
hostile. You obviously have no social skills, or perhaps Tourette Syndrome?

I made my needs perfectly clear- amplified output.

Riiiight. Doesn't occur to you that different amplifiers have different
purposes. That's why its a good thing that we moved away from the whole
amplified sound card thing - because it means the amp can be properly
matched to the speaker.

First of all, the Sound Blaster Extigy has an AC adapter. I'm assuming
you just didn't know that, because the same paragraph where you recomend
it, you start out with "You're right about the power bricks". So thanks
for the idea but no go.

Oh, you sound sooo sincerely thankful. Knobhead. Yeah, I forgot that the
Extigy uses an external DC adapter. Perhaps you could stop being such
a lazy whinger, and search for similar products - like the Sound Blaster
Go!, which is also external USB, but is powered by the USB bus:

http://www.shentech.com/crsoblgoexus.html

Anyway, I don't give a flying **** whether this suits your needs or not.

The other problem with the Sound Blaster Extigy is that it costs $150.
This is just another case for my point that I could get a better
soundcard for the average user's needs in 1999. I pad $29.95 for my
(beloved, sadly) Soundblaster 64 AWE value. Nearly 6 years later I'm
paying $150 to get a bulkier powerhog to be a poor substitute? Pathetic.

Yeah? Well in 1988 I paid AU$0.50 for a can of Coke. Thankfully, the SB
Go! is also much cheaper than the extigy, which is sure to be (loudly
distorted) music to the ears of a cheapskate living in the past...

I'll keep looking, but my point very clearly stands firm, in spite of
the barrage of hopelessly flawed arguments against it here. I was
happier with my soundcard in 1999 than any card made in 2004 (afaik),
and the nature of my need is obviously not so extravagent.

Well, I wouldn't be hoping for any real help here. Any hopes you had were
dashed when you revealed yourself to be more interested in complaining
than solving the problem. You just keep up your fruitless, ineffectual
looking, and do us all a favour by refraining from posting any more of
your tripe.

Well, the bottom line is that most PC power supplies really don't have the
capacity to operate a power amplifier along with everything else in the
machine. It's simply a bad design. Sure, it probably works in some
configurations, but I'll bet they had constant customer service problems
with other devices installed in the same computer crashing all the time.
It's a good thing they stopped doing it.

"Karl Uppiano" wrote in message
news:beGhd.3625$KL4.1078@trnddc07

Well, the bottom line is that most PC power supplies really don't
have the capacity to operate a power amplifier along with everything
else in the machine. It's simply a bad design. Sure, it probably
works in some configurations, but I'll bet they had constant customer
service problems with other devices installed in the same computer
crashing all the time. It's a good thing they stopped doing it.

It is possible to crash a PC by putting too big of a power amp on the 12
volt line, but it's also possible to get a useful amount of power that way.

On Tue, 02 Nov 2004 06:58:15 GMT, "Karl Uppiano"
wrote:

Well, the bottom line is that most PC power supplies really don't have the
capacity to operate a power amplifier along with everything else in the
machine. It's simply a bad design. Sure, it probably works in some
configurations, but I'll bet they had constant customer service problems
with other devices installed in the same computer crashing all the time.
It's a good thing they stopped doing it.

Ingenious argument. I suspect it also has something to do with
people wanting computer speakers with a little bass output. The only
way to get this from a small box is to pump quite a lot of power in.

When building non-music systems requiring only basic sound my local
supplier has powered speakers that tap mains power off a piggy-back
iec connector. They're only 5UKP a pair, and quite surprisingly
good.

Musicians require better. But invariably already own it. They need
a simple cable to their existing hi-fi system, or to their
mixer/amp/monitors etc. if they're recording musicians. We're beyond
the scope of dedicated "computer" speakers here.

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"Karl Uppiano" wrote in message
news:beGhd.3625$KL4.1078@trnddc07

Well, the bottom line is that most PC power supplies really don't
have the capacity to operate a power amplifier along with everything
else in the machine. It's simply a bad design. Sure, it probably
works in some configurations, but I'll bet they had constant customer
service problems with other devices installed in the same computer
crashing all the time. It's a good thing they stopped doing it.

It is possible to crash a PC by putting too big of a power amp on the 12
volt line, but it's also possible to get a useful amount of power that
way.

Well, an amp running on a +/- 12 volt supply can theoretically provide about
8 watts RMS into an 8-ohm speaker, or 16 watts into a 4-ohm speaker. Double
that for stereo: 16 or 32 watts. That translates to about 2 amps or 4 amps,
respectively. Unfortunately, the power supplies I looked at only supply 1A
on the -12 volt line. The supply would most likely go into current limiting
(or worse) if someone were to attempt to drive the amplifier to full power
into an 8-ohm or 4-ohm load. The amplifier would have to draw much less than
this in order to be a good neighbor on the bus. If the power supply goes
into current limiting, other devices will be starved for power, and the
computer could crash. A +/-12 volt supply is about right for line level
outputs, however. Simply current-limiting the amplifier would make it a good
neighbor, and it could drive most headphones to reasonable loudness.

I can't tell if the OP wants more gain or more power. Most external, hi-fi
amps I've seen have about 20 dB more gain than they need, so that the
amplifier approaches full output on peaks when the volume control is only
halfway up (audio taper pots I've worked with are about -20 dB at the mid
point). I think they leave more headroom for the multi-channel mixers on the
sound cards. I've also noticed that the volume controls on the Windows mixer
don't seem to have a normal audio taper. They feel more like a linear taper,
and pushing them wide open doesn't cause the kind of extreme gain we're used
to on normal consumer products. I wonder why that is.

"Karl Uppiano" wrote in message
news:xKXhd.5290$pY6.683@trnddc04

Well, an amp running on a +/- 12 volt supply can theoretically
provide about 8 watts RMS into an 8-ohm speaker, or 16 watts into a
4-ohm speaker. Double that for stereo: 16 or 32 watts. That
translates to about 2 amps or 4 amps, respectively. Unfortunately,
the power supplies I looked at only supply 1A on the -12 volt line.

I've only worked with amps running off of the +12 line, which has lots of
amps. That and bridged output stages provide similar amounts of power to
what you seem to be talking about.