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BloodyN00b
Musician and computer anti-talent?

Age 32, Male

Sweden

Joined on 8/27/05

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X-fi and me

Posted by BloodyN00b - April 25th, 2011


The Creative X-fi series of sound cards is probably known for being in collusion with the devil. They are great cards, when they work. But I should have looked up the facts before I bought an extreme gamer card many years ago.

I used to love it for everything from its gold-plated connectors to its driver software, with so many settings to tweak that I never bothered to learn what they are, but most importantly I liked the clarity of the sound. Although it's usually the headphones that are the culprit in bad audio quality, this sound card did improve the aural experience a lot from the ancient piece of onboard hardware I had before. And when I got into music production, it was adequate.

The more time that passed, the higher became my demands on polyphony, signal delay and distorsion, etc. And I think that the load on the card increased as I started to push it harder, but it used to live up to expectations in most situations that didn't require timing-critical recording. Which in my case is 99% of the time. But all good things must come to an end.

Today, some moments ago, I eagerly opened up FL Studio for a short composing session and then the card went all insurgent on me. Instead of the typical anaphone sound FL Studio should play when it opens, I got the sonic version of assasination. It was something like a sudden explosion of static so extremely loud that I had to throw my headphones off of me. It was very unexpected and highly unpleasant. I think I may be suffering a little temporary hearing loss now.

Hearing loss or no hearing loss, Beethoven went deaf and it didn't bother him, but if I cannot trust my own hardware then what can I trust? The relationship between the X-fi and me will never be the same again knowing that until I find out what caused that malfunction I risk getting physically hurt by my machine.
Up until this year I thought that the most dangerous thing about computers were the bad habits and sitting in an unnatural position for 10h+ a day, but that is nothing compared to hazards like this and the PSU explosion I experienced a month ago. What will the next malfunction be?


Comments

YOUR SO AWESOME!
WHy dont anyone on ng recognise such epic talent :O

Oh but they do. At least some of them =)
And this year I've started to get requests from people who want me to do music for their projects, so I think that my journey here on ng is still just starting.

Thanks for your support! And please use my music in your flashes =)

Damn dude, since 05' you've been on here? But other than that, Software and machine malfunctions SUCK. Been there done that.

Hope all turns out well in the end bro,

Gaige

Nope, I've only had this account since '05. Been on here for way longer, don't know if I should be proud or ashamed, lol.

Anyway, did you soundcard also do this? Damn, I thought this is the kind of malfunction computers had in the 50s and that there are safeguards nowadays. =(

In the end everything turns out well, right? Thanks man =)

du er svensk :O
jeg kommer fra norge!
Naboer :D

Häftigt! Jag gillar era fjordar!

Skandinavia er Best, og roligt :D