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Yet the other Creative Labs is still up.

For a moment, I thought "I knew they bought Oculus, but I didn't know about Sound Blaster." Then I read the article.

Makes you wonder if they closed it in part as a response to a legal challenge over trademark...

Yet the other Creative Labs is still up.

For a moment, I thought "I knew they bought Oculus, but I didn't know about Sound Blaster." Then I read the article.

Until there's a more standardized desktop environment such that developers can target one one platform and know that they'll have broad Linux market reach, why would any company bother?

Um... there already is. OpenGL + SDL covers basically everything DirectX does (yes, DirectInput and all that). If you need environmental audio, you can use OpenAL, or roll your own as I gather Id did for Doom3 (and not just on Linux, on Windows as well - you need a patch for hardware audio). As a bonus, SDL apps run on Windows and OSX (along with several other platforms) as well.

Games don't care about the desktop, except for installing a menu item and/or an icon to run the game. And, well, there's a standard for that, too. Once they're running, they take over the screen anyway.

The issues with Linux gaming is entirely a chicken-egg market-share problem. There is just not any kind of technical barrier. Anyone doing a PS3 version is already doing an OpenGL version anyway, so a Linux port is actually quite easy at that point.

A Behringer sticker on the back helped a lot more (keeps the cable plugged in), and the girls particularly like the neck sticker that says "Choose 3 of your favorite songs and save BIG!"

What si so special aboout this thing? Becasue it can take input from an anaglog or digital source? Hos is this better than a simple Soundblaster Audigy?

I installed Fedora Core 3 lately. During the install process, it detected my hardware fine, even the sound card. There was a little button titled "Test Sound", I pressed it and a sound played, so the installer knew what my sound card was and where it was.

After the installation though, I never heard a single sound. I tried, in the administration panel, to fix the sound card thing. On the panel, it showed the card I had, which was correct (it's a SoundBlaster Audigy 2, there was an "auto-detect" button there, so I pressed it. It asked "Do you hear this sound?". I didn't hear it, so I said "No". Then it said "Auto-detect failed" and didn't try anything else.

I already accepted that I couldn't use my ATI All-in-Wonder card to watch TV on Linux, but now that I can't even listen to music either, I almost always boot my system in WinXP. It's not even worth trying to get a Linux-compatible TV-Tuner card, I won't even be able to hear the sound from the TV!.

Fix the sound, and it'll be easier to use.

From http://www.soundblaster.com/products/audigy2/specs .asp

That's 96kHz sampling, which would have a nyquist limit frequency of 48kHz. (The poster you replied to wasn't talking about sampling rates.)

The Xenarc screens are supposed to be better than the Lilliput screens FWIW. I've purchased a 7inch version with vid capability as well as VGA for under $400 off of EBAY.

I've been looking into this in order to monitor what's going on with my car's standalone EFI system. Since that EFI system's software allows me to build "dashboards" I can do LOTS of interesting displays. I have been collecting URLs and you can see pics of other's progress and discussion here -> http://forum.aempower.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=9604

Some URLs I've collected in no distinct order or organization:

http://www.logisysus.com/catalog/product_info.php? cPath=74&products_id=189
http://logisysus.com/catalog/product_info.php?prod ucts_id=334
http://www.kingyoung.com.tw/s620.htm
http://littlepc.com/
http://www.diamondsystems.com/
http://www.viaarena.com/
http://www.media-car.fr.st/
http://www.everythingusb.com/hardware/index/Griffi n_RadioSHARK_AM-FM_Radio.htm
http://www.xmradio.com/xmpcr/ (I bought one, have added optical output, and have purchased TimeTrax!)
http://www.hauppauge.com/html/wintvpvr usb_datashee t.htm> (have one on the way, thanks EBAY!)
http://store.karpc.com/cat-LCD-Touch-Screen--lcdmo nitor.htm
http://www.mp3car.com/
http://www.soundblaster.com/products/audigy2NX/
http://www.carbotpc.com/products/
http://www.powerstream.com/DC_PC.htm
http://www.powerstream.com/mini-itx.htm
http://www.media-car.fr.st/
http://drivesoft.net/
http://www.gnetcanada.com/
http://www.lighttek.com/talisman.htm
http://skylab.org/~chugga/mpegbox/MPBS1/
http://www.compucar.be.tf/
http://www.autonode.com/ig710specs.html?
http://www.trc12volt.com/
http://www.intraplexcorp.com/tx3.asp
http://www.sfftech.com/
http://www.mini-itx.com/store/
http://www.dashmatics.com/forum/faq.php

Hopefully some of those will be of help to others considering this sort of thing, I'd be interested in working with others to research this! My plans are to mock up something with the touchscreen and front-end software working with the WINTV, XM PCR, my MP3 collection, GPS mapping, the RLTC software, and my AEM datalogging software. IF it works well (or even halfway well) THEN I'll buy hardware to put IN the car. No sense spending the money if the interface turns out to suck or be too distracting while driving. I'll likely be able to play DVDs too but honestly that's pretty se

It's crap, actually.

I had a dual booting box at work, and my boss, being a total asshole, refused to give me the driver disk for the super jazzy sound card on the damn thing, I guess thinking that music might ruin my productivity. Now for WINDOWS, this was a huge problem, because you couldn't install the drivers without the original cd, don't ask me why. Couldn't download them from the site, couldn't do crap.

With Linux, on the other hand, the card autodetected and played fine, using, of course, the hacked up, jury-rigged driver that linux always has to use because NO MAJOR SOUND CARD VENDOR RELEASES LINUX DRIVERS, a point not mentioned by the dumbass who wrote the article.

What was the card, you ask? Soundblaster Audigy Platinum To my tiny brain, that would qualify as mainstream.

Thus the point is proven totally false by the fact that Linux is capable of doing 2 things a Windows 2000 box couldn't: 1) use a mainstream sound card, and 2) be a server.

I have a cherry keyboard with built-in 4x usb hub, mouse attached to it (and racing wheel ;-).

I'm thinking about tinkering some more usb connectors and a switch/toggle into that keyboard so that i can connect it more than one pc, easy switching to and fro. Ok, i still need a vga switch ...

/graf0z.

ps: anybody experiances with soundblaster extigy or an audigy2nx and linux?

wrong, its a hardware and driver standard, hence why it is also present in a Macintosh
Both platforms running Logic Audio or Cubase use ASIO if the hardware supports it.

All You Need To Know About ASIO
As computers become more commonplace in recording and home project studios, so does the demand for faster, more responsive sound cards to work in these systems. A sound card is expected to enhance the recording process by handling many jobs at once. At any given time it's expected to be recording audio from a single or multiple inputs, playing back audio from multiple sources such as audio from the hard drive or virtual synthesizer instruments, and doing it all in a synchronous manner keeping in step with MIDI or other time dependent devices. These requirements are steep and often leave an ill-equipped system at a grinding halt.

In order to create a more direct path to the hardware, and also make the hardware more responsive to the software's needs, Steinberg of Germany (developer of the popular Cubase digital sequencer and Nuendo digital audio workstation) developed Audio Stream In/Out (ASIO) technology. ASIO has made its mark as the driver standard for delivering low-latency transfer of digital audio. This means that hardware supporting an ASIO driver is able to deliver low-latency recording and monitoring to hard disk.

http://www.soundblaster.com/resources/read.asp?art icleid=60&cat=2

you can grab the Steinberg ASIO SDK or jump on the mail lists here

Creative Uses 5.25" Drive Bays?

Sound Blaster Audigy

This poking out of one of you 5.25" bays, whilst easy, has more effect than lots of the smaller case-mods I've seen :)

I'm not up to date on PC soundcards, but I'd look for one that has all the analog electronics outside the computer case. this, maybe?

Or a DigidesignMbox.

For the record 5.1 is only 5 directional speakers. The bass is not directional. And AFAIK only the XBox support 5.1 sound. At least the GameCube only support ProLogic2.

And to answer your question, they got their at together a while ago.

USB audio connectors such as the Extigy and the Stereo Link, on the other hand, have an all-digital connection to the computer and shielding around all the electronic components. This will produce much cleaner sound.

There's no point getting good speakers if the audio being played on them is of poor quality.

Here's a review of the iPod I posted on Slashdot a while back in a thread about the release of the XPlay software.

A good friend of mine got an iPod as a corporate gift (he works for a major market radio station) and gave it to me since he doesn't own a Mac. Now, I don't have a Mac either, but as a tech-head and a digital audio guy I figured I could probably do something with it. I actually did consider getting a new iMac, but I'd heard about XPod (now XPlay) and figured I could check it out if I got a firewire port somehow.

Some background: I have been running Windows XP for about six months now on my homebuilt Athlon PC (T-Bird 1.33). I have been very happy with the performance and stability of XP, but the Turtle Beach Montego II Home Studio sound card I have used for years is only supported under 9x. I could get basic analog audio working by disabling ACPI in the BIOS, but with lousy driver support and no digital I/O, I realized it was time to upgrade. I thought about getting a semi-pro audio card such as those from Terratec, M-Audio, and Event, but since I also use my PC for games and home theater, I ended up getting the Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum Ex. The last Creative card I had was a SB AWE32 many years ago, and though I wouldn't touch the Live! series (especially since my mobo uses a Via chipset), the Audigy is totally killer. Now, just as posts here have mentioned the possibility of people buying a Mac to complement the iPod, a big part of the reason I picked the Audigy was for the built-in Firewire port.

Okay, time to get to the goods. I downloaded and installed a beta of XPlay and hooked up my virgin iPod. To my surprise, Windows immediately recognized the iPod as an external drive and mapped it through explorer. XPlay seemed to suggest that I should control the iPod primarily through Windows Media Player, but I have generally stayed away from WMP since they introduced v7. I have never been fond of its music library management, especially since it likes to screw with your music files even if you don't want it to--no ID3v2 tags for me, thank you. And the idea that it needs to lock up 30MB of RAM just to play one song is pretty ludicrous. A quick check revealed that WMP8 did indeed see the iPod as a portable device, but I wasn't going to use it to transfer any files.

My mp3 collection is up to about 30GB now (all ripped myself using EAC with LAME), so it was a little difficult to pick out which five gigs of tunes I wanted to take with me. Going through Windows Explorer, I ctrl-clicked the folders of my favorite albums and dragged them into the \Music folder on the mapped iPod drive. Transfer was fast but not blazing, taking about 25 minutes to copy everything over the firewire. Using the Explorer interface meant that no playlists were transferred, but the Artist/Album interface on the iPod is so good that I don't really need them anyway. I suppose that I'm not really using XPlay to its fullest, but at least WMP doesn't muck up my mp3s in the process. I'd love to see plug-in support for the iPod in my player of choice, JRiver's Media Jukebox.

Reactions: While I'm not using any of XPlay's features beyond the support for HFS, I don't really need it to. I'd much rather control things myself anyway, just doing drag 'n drops instead of becoming a slave to the software interface. I also have a first gen Diamond Rio (parallel port connection!) and the original Rio Volt, and the included software has never wowed me enough to use it regularly. Actually, that's why I liked the Volt most of all, since I could just burn my own CD's and be done with it. The iPod is definitely best of all though--the small size makes it much more convenient for the car or carrying in your pocket, and the rechargeable lithium-ion battery is just awesome. I use it in the car every day (about an hour-round trip) and only have to charge it every other week. The playback interface is the best of any I have seen--very easy to control with one hand and the white backlight works great in the dark. It does seem to skip sometimes, though it seems it's actually blank parts in the mp3 file since it happens in the same part of a song every time. My guess is that there was a blip of some sort during the firewire transfer, since the mp3s play back perfect on the computer.

Overall, XPlay does what it advertises. I can use the iPod on my PC, which would not be possible otherwise. However, there are some other features I'd like to see, such as the ability to upgrade the iPod firmware and synchronization support for programs other than WMP. Combining the huge installed base of the PC/Windows platform with the style and reliabilty of Apple hardware is a winning situation for everyone. I think that MediaFour has done just what Apple had hoped, allowing them to sell more units without getting into the headache of supporting the PC platform. And personally, I am thrilled to be an Apple user again, since my first home computer was a IIGS. Who knows, I still might pick up an iMac after all...

Plus, we can't forget that companies like Creative Labs are trying to push Firewire a bit more with their Audigy cards, which have an "SB 1394" port built-in. Not that I care for Creative, or anything, but this will certainly help make 1394 a bit more mainstream.

Creative Labs SB 1394

I think that now is the time that Firewire is just starting to take off. In my experience, USB has been unreliable at best. I don't think 2.0 is a whole lot better, aside from speed. 1394 for devices that need speed and reliability, and USB for mice and printers. That's the way that it should be.

I don't trust USB completely. I've had problems with hubs deciding not to supply power, and the bandwidth is too narrow. From what I've heard about USB CD recorders, I'm not alone.

When I burned my first couple of cd's I was careful not to use the machine (laptop, PIII 750) for fear of swamping the USB's bandwidth... I've got a USB keyboard, USB mouse, USB compact flash reader and a USB cable for my PDA.

However, I'm happy to report, everything seems to work just fine and dandy when using other USB devices. Granted, I haven't tried using everything at the exact same time... but, I'm pleasantly surprised by the performance.

Maybe tonight I'll try my hardest at making a coaster... </evilgrin>

Anyway, I've also been thinking about getting a USB sound device... either the Stereo-Link or Extigy. I like the Extigy because it's got a lot of "stuff" (sparing the details). But, I also like the Stereo-Link because it's not Creative's product. I haven't quite decided, yet... here are some reviews:

• Extigy: 1, 2, 3;
• Stereo-Link: 1, 2, 3.

Isn't [Sony's i.Link] the same thing?

It's also the same thing as Creative's SB1394, and I believe digital video cameras call it a DV port - everybody just wants to put their own name on it. The interesting things with creative's is, you can (at least theoretically) connect two computers to each other with it, like a really fast serial cable connection. I didn't have the means to test this out though.

For those looking for a cheap home theater PC upgrade, the Creative Audigy sound card provides Dolby Digital 5.1 sound and an integrated IEEE 1394 Firewire port. I was surprised how easy it was to capture video from my Sony Camcorder through the 1394 port and burn it to a Video CD. PriceWatch has several companies listing it for under $60.

Don't know if anyone will see this post as I caught this thread late in the game, but I though I'd share my experiences with using XPlay to access the iPod in Windows.

A good friend of mine got an iPod as a corporate gift (he works for a major market radio station) and gave it to me since he doesn't own a Mac. Now, I don't have a Mac either, but as a tech-head and a digital audio guy I figured I could probably do something with it. I actually did consider getting a new iMac, but I'd heard about XPod (now XPlay) and figured I could check it out if I got a firewire port somehow.

Some background: I have been running Windows XP for about six months now on my homebuilt Athlon PC (T-Bird 1.33). I have been very happy with the performance and stability of XP, but the Turtle Beach Montego II Home Studio sound card I have used for years is only supported under 9x. I could get basic analog audio working by disabling ACPI in the BIOS, but with lousy driver support and no digital I/O, I realized it was time to upgrade.

I thought about getting a semi-pro audio card such as those from Terratec, M-Audio, and Event, but since I also use my PC for games and home theater, I ended up getting the Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum Ex. The last Creative card I had was a SB AWE32 many years ago, and though I wouldn't touch the Live! series (especially since my mobo uses a Via chipset), the Audigy is totally killer. Now, just as posts here have mentioned the possibility of people buying a Mac to complement the iPod, a big part of the reason I picked the Audigy was for the built-in Firewire port.

Okay, time to get to the goods. I downloaded and installed a beta of XPlay and hooked up my virgin iPod. To my surprise, Windows immediately recognized the iPod as an external drive and mapped it through explorer. XPlay seemed to suggest that I should control the iPod primarily through Windows Media Player, but I have generally stayed away from WMP since they introduced v7. I have never been fond of its music library management, especially since it likes to screw with your music files even if you don't want it to--no ID3v2 tags for me, thank you. And the idea that it needs to lock up 30MB of RAM just to play one song is pretty ludicrous. A quick check revealed that WMP8 did indeed see the iPod as a portable device, but I wasn't going to use it to transfer any files.

My mp3 collection is up to about 30GB now (all ripped myself using EAC with LAME), so it was a little difficult to pick out which five gigs of tunes I wanted to take with me. Going through Windows Explorer, I ctrl-clicked the folders of my favorite albums and dragged them into the \Music folder on the mapped iPod drive. Transfer was fast but not blazing, taking about 25 minutes to copy everything over the firewire. Using the Explorer interface meant that no playlists were transferred, but the Artist/Album interface on the iPod is so good that I don't really need them anyway. I suppose that I'm not really using XPlay to its fullest, but at least WMP doesn't muck up my mp3s in the process. I'd love to see plug-in support for the iPod in my player of choice, JRiver's Media Jukebox.

Reactions: While I'm not using any of XPlay's features beyond the support for HFS, I don't really need it to. I'd much rather control things myself anyway, just doing drag 'n drops instead of becoming a slave to the software interface. I also have a first gen Diamond Rio (parallel port connection!) and the original Rio Volt, and the included software has never wowed me enough to use it regularly. Actually, that's why I liked the Volt most of all, since I could just burn my own CD's and be done with it.

The iPod is definitely best of all though--the small size makes it much more convenient for the car or carrying in your pocket, and the rechargeable lithium-ion battery is just awesome. I use it in the car every day (about an hour-round trip) and only have to charge it every other week. The playback interface is the best of any I have seen--very easy to control with one hand and the white backlight works great in the dark. It does seem to skip sometimes, though it seems it's actually blank parts in the mp3 file since it happens in the same part of a song every time. My guess is that there was a blip of some sort during the firewire transfer, since the mp3s play back perfect on the computer.

Overall, XPlay does what it advertises. I can use the iPod on my PC, which would not be possible otherwise. However, there are some other features I'd like to see, such as the ability to upgrade the iPod firmware and synchronization support for programs other than WMP. Combining the huge installed base of the PC/Windows platform with the style and reliabilty of Apple hardware is a winning situation for everyone. I think that MediaFour has done just what Apple had hoped, allowing them to sell more units without getting into the headache of supporting the PC platform. And personally, I am thrilled to be an Apple user again, since my first home computer was a IIGS. Who knows, I still might pick up an iMac after all...

- Leigh

Who cares? I can get a generic two-port FireWire card (or USB 2.0, or whatever) for $13 from Pricewatch, for my ugly but oh-so-expandable box. Hell, FireWire ports get thrown in as bonuses on video & sound cards these days.

That's why I won't be buying an iMac (or Profile) anytime soon.

• Obviously you'll need a good sound card, Creative's Sound Blaster Live! is comparitvely cheap for the value you get.
• You'll need good microphones, also (it's amazing the difference quality makes). Nice mikes will let you record any instrument, electric or not. I would suggest the company Shure.
• Next on your list would be a mixer, I would highly suggest Mackie boards, and for slightly cheaper tastes the Behringer line.
• Another key component is good cabling. It's tempting to just run over to Radio Shack and buy what you need... but I've found those cables to have crappy shielding, almost no jacket, and die after about 2 years. I would suggest Hosa cables, or, if you have extra cash, Monster cables.
• Lastly you might think of getting a headphone matrix. This is mainly useful if you want to record a band/mutiple people at once. It allows you to amplify the sound a person is making back to them.Also it will allow you to have 6+ headphones w/o splitting the signal.

Don't need it. DVD player with optical out, extigy sound card with 24 bit optical in.

They only PARTLY follow the standard, audio cd players have heavy duty built in error correction, cd-rom drives don't.

Check out the extigy (or the internal audigy). Optical in. 24 bit sound. Have a dvd player that plays audio cds? With an optical out? Bam! Digital recording without your cd-rom drive. CD players with optical outs are rarer, though I have some. Once you have the perfect .wav files, you can even burn yourself a non-copyprotected version of the cd. And of course the files you record on your computer will be ever-so-much higher quality than the compressed files they 'allow' you to play on your windoze pc.

"...AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY OF NONINFRINGEMENT. THERE IS NO WARRANTY ..... YOU WILL NOT HOLD US OR OUR AGENTS, EMPLOYEES, PARENTS, SUBSIDIARIES, AFFILIATES, LICENSORS, BUSINESS PARTNERS AND/OR SUPPLIERS, AS APPLICABLE, RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGES THAT RESULT FROM YOU USING THE PLAYER OR CONTENT, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY INFECTIONS OR CONTAMINATIONS OF YOUR COMPUTER OR DAMAGE TO ANY SOFTWARE OR SYSTEMS YOU USE TO ACCESS THE SAME THAT MAY RESULT FROM THAT USE."

Not that I'm paranoid or anything.... but Magic Lantern anyone?

They are giving themselves legal room to infect your computer with a virus that could detect copyright infringing material and re-format your hard drive. Not that I think they're doing so, but they now have the legal 'right' and you as an innocent consumer have agreed to allow them to damage your computer. All to prevent copying the cd. And of course they also disclaim warranty of noninfringement. What the heck is that all about? Are they infringing someone's copyright to prevent you from doing the same?

Of course, if you have a sound blaster audigy or extigy with an optical in, and you play the cd in your dvd player (or rarer cd player with optical out) which you hook up to your sound card, you now have a 24 bit digital recording that doesn't use your cd-rom drive in any way shape or form. And that also will sound infinitely better than their compressed version. And which you have every legal right to make, as long as you're technologically sophisticated enough to do so. I really need to get me one of those phatty sound cards anyway, particularly since I have cd players with optical outs, a feature I've never been able to take advantage of before.

"...AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY OF NONINFRINGEMENT. THERE IS NO WARRANTY ..... YOU WILL NOT HOLD US OR OUR AGENTS, EMPLOYEES, PARENTS, SUBSIDIARIES, AFFILIATES, LICENSORS, BUSINESS PARTNERS AND/OR SUPPLIERS, AS APPLICABLE, RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGES THAT RESULT FROM YOU USING THE PLAYER OR CONTENT, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY INFECTIONS OR CONTAMINATIONS OF YOUR COMPUTER OR DAMAGE TO ANY SOFTWARE OR SYSTEMS YOU USE TO ACCESS THE SAME THAT MAY RESULT FROM THAT USE."

Not that I'm paranoid or anything.... but Magic Lantern anyone?

They are giving themselves legal room to infect your computer with a virus that could detect copyright infringing material and re-format your hard drive. Not that I think they're doing so, but they now have the legal 'right' and you as an innocent consumer have agreed to allow them to damage your computer. All to prevent copying the cd. And of course they also disclaim warranty of noninfringement. What the heck is that all about? Are they infringing someone's copyright to prevent you from doing the same?

Of course, if you have a sound blaster audigy or extigy with an optical in, and you play the cd in your dvd player (or rarer cd player with optical out) which you hook up to your sound card, you now have a 24 bit digital recording that doesn't use your cd-rom drive in any way shape or form. And that also will sound infinitely better than their compressed version. And which you have every legal right to make, as long as you're technologically sophisticated enough to do so. I really need to get me one of those phatty sound cards anyway, particularly since I have cd players with optical outs, a feature I've never been able to take advantage of before.

Extigy
Platinum5.1 w/Live!Drive

Extigy
Platinum5.1 w/Live!Drive

What is seen as a good idea here can be extended.

There are various facets in use in the market today, in one form or another....... i.e.

"PC monitors that detach and become portable touch-screen tablets, allowing users to roam the house reading E-mail and accessing other information stored on a PC"

and of course this threads story on extigy

........in what is described below:
(replace "Linux system" where you see "amiga"!!!!)

Enclosures

Image of a modular system

another description of the image (note Raritan is not what it was in 1997 - which was a injection molding case manufacture)

and another perspective

Certainly a musician would find it beneficial to be able to add as many channels (actual hardware modules) into his processing/recording mix system.

Is there a reason you aren't using Creative's regular drivers for Windows XP?

http://www.creative.com/support/winxp/

Audigy Specific Drivers for XP are here.

Why you couldn't find these yourself is beyond me.

If the drivers still don't work after using these, I think there might be a problem with your installation or some other hardware....

Furthermore, I've heard all sorts of horrible things about VIA's KT266 chipset, and now that there are alternatives, there's really no reason to buy it at all. SiS's AMD chipset rocks (if you don't believe me, read this, but if you're going for cost-no-object performance, you'll want one of tyan's mobos w/ AMD's own chipset.

Also, Creative has a new sound card out, and it has built in firewire, and considering that, it's not too much more than the platinum. And you may want to at least consider ATI graphics solutions, esp if you're ever going to run linux on this machine. From the reviews I've read, the 8500 is comparable or better than the GeForce3 in most ways. If everyone starts considering nvidia a foregone conclusion, it won't be long before we don't have a choice at all.

As far as the silent drive thing goes, insulating a device that is supposed to be conduction cooled (ie it conducts heat through its metal casing) is a very bad idea! nuf said.

Finally, those of you considering those nifty round IDE cables may want to read this first.

In closing, I would like to point out that this article was little more than a shameless plug for thinkgeek and pc power and cooling. All of the choices that didn't involve these stores were ill thought out. And you'll notice when it comes to the cpu fan, a very important piece of hardware these days, he didn't even bother telling us what he bought, only that he got it from pc power and cooling!

If Hemos ever had any creditibility, he just pimped it out to thinkgeek and pc power and cooling. Oh well. I guess in these troubled times, ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

if you're not too conferned about cost, you might want to check out Creative's new Soundblaster Audigy - the Ex version has a box similar to the "LiveDrive" of the SB Live but it's external with a thick cable to connect it to the SB Audigy card. The card does 24 bit 5.1 channel audio and also provides a firewire port and all the digital I/O that the high end SB Live cards had. I found the drive bay box on the SB Live Platinum to be a pain in the butt too, I never managed to get it mounted securely in a Dell box, but this external box is great.

What's more, the service is emminently hackable so if they really did go down it wouldn't be hard to build a listings service that kept the unit functionality going in spite of a company closure. Several people have claimed to hack this already, though code is not readily available last I checked (for obvious reasons). Either way, I've got my daily calls going over my ethernet network, so it wouldn't be hard to sniff out the necessary bits or put some work into documenting the MFS partition formats and inserting it directly from a source like XMLTV.

So, for a fun project and damn useful toy, grab yourself a 20 hour Tivo cheap (see AVS TiVo Forums for pointers to cheap deals at Wal-Mart, Target, etc.), a big harddrive (most any 5400 rpm will do), and a hard drive bracket and ethernet adapter (here's a good tutorial). Then have fun with a device that's both well suited to the task (stable, nice tv based user interface, very sharp picture) and gives you a chance to sink your teeth into some fun hacks.

FWIW, I've been spending a lot of time hacking up my own media-box project of late and I really think that it isn't yet a viable option. Dual booting Debian/WinME with a AIW Radeon and SB Live Platinum 5.1 gives you the ability to do everything a TiVo can and more, but the interface, stability, and interoperability leave a lot to be desired. On the up side, its great to be able to play DivX, MP3, Emulators, etc. in the living room A/V system. Wonderful as a system oriented towards archived playback, music, and games, but don't buy one thinking its going to be nearly as useful in place of a TiVo.

... rjs

Sure, it autodetected my GeForce2GTS...

Also, it detected my SBLive...

about one year ago. i set two limitations to the design of my "lan party computer"

1. it must use standard components (to make it easier to find parts to buy)
2. it must be cheap (at least cheaper than a comparable laptop)

this is a list of components that i used to build the system.
i updated parts of the list to reflect what components i would buy if i was going to build it today.

case mini tower $60
monitor 14" lcd $600
motherboard micro atx $100
processor P3 800Mhz 100FSB $160
ram 256MBpc100SDRAM $100
video Geforce2GTS64MB $195
keyboard mini-keyboard $40
mouse cordless optical $70
hard drive 40GB ide $100
cd-rom drive Plextor16/10/40A $250
floppy 1.44MB Generic $10
sound card SB Live Value $40
network card netgear FA310TX $20
cat5 cable 14 feet $20
headphones koss td61 $20
carry strap GearGrip Pro $35

other stuff:
cable bag a small, strong bag to attach to the side of the case to hold all the cables
power cable with 3 outlets that have 3 prongs each to accommodate the power cables for your system and monitor

i attached the lcd monitor to one side of the case and the cable bag to the other side. i put all the cables attached to the computer inside the bag to get them out of the way. then, when i went to a lan party i would only have to take one power cable, one network cable, the mini-keyboard, cordless mouse, and headphones out of the cable bag. everything was already connected at the back of the computer so there was no onsite setup involved.

i also screwed a piece of plexiglass onto the lcd monitor to protect the screen. (yes it was stupid to drill holes into a monitor that i just spent $900 on at that time, but it worked)

i had a lot of fun with that computer. i even dropped it down a flight of stairs once and the case was bent and all the pci cards popped out of their sockets. i put it back together and it worked fine.
the only downside to building this system was that it weighed about 30lbs. although if you spent more money on a lunchbox case with integrated lcd it would still weigh a lot.

unfortunately i never took any pictures of it for posterity and i ended up dismantling it for parts about 6 months ago, but i'm sure you get the idea.

-stan

Obviously, Creative could (at some point) decide to block copyrighted material from being recorded in either hardware or software.

As to why this is being done... the recording industry believes they have a right to dictate how, when and where you can listen/watch the copyrighted material that they sell you. They want to be able to control every aspect of both distribution and use. By doing so they can set whatever price they want because you have no other choice. That's my take on it anyway.

Creative soundcards aren't good, they're good enough. Without competition there really isn't any way to judge 'better' or 'worse'.

There are plenty of other sound card manufacturers out there. Look at AOpen, Crystal and Analog Devices. They all make sound cards, but why are they not leading the market? Because Creative cards are just plain better.

I have never had problems installing a Creative card. Plus, they are still improving their cards (even when they don't have to). The new series of Live cards prove this. They are amazingly above their old Live series and the competition. I have tried the other cards, and my judgement is that Creative leads the market because their products are insanely superior to the competition. Besides...how much more can one add on to a sound card???

Unless they are going to create new drivers, copying this is as easy as running it in a sandbox and intercepting the input to the sound card drivers.

Two words SoundBlaster Live Just play the stream through one of those (or any other card with a digital mixer, and you get a carbon copy anyway

Since both of the companies refuse to release detailed specifications, the only way to obtain the required information is to investigate the way the Windows software interacts with the card.

Hmm, I wonder if they would be more willing to help out if we asked them for help? You can write to Sigma Designs here and Creative Labs here.

Be sure to keep it polite and to stress how it help their company.

"He [Mark Litvack, the MPAA's legal director for worldwide antipiracy] added that there are authorized Linux-based DVD players on the market." Is this accurate? Can anyone provide a link to a commercial or non-commercial Linux player authorized by the DVD-CCA? ------ I do not believe this one is "Authorized" But i do not believe it is illegal. Opensource.soundblaster.com
I use this in linux, but you need the now hard to find Creative Labs Dxr2 decoder board, which has CSS on-chip.

...the majority of their customers aren't computer geeks.

While the majority of computer users/owners around the world aren't computer geeks, many of them have friends who are computer geeks. Many of these technical illiterati ask their techno-friends for advice when deciding what to buy. I've seen it a thousand times.

In addition, some of us computer geeks are in positions where we buy hardware for our companies. Whenever I have to choose between two products of equal value to my business, I am heavily influenced by which product/vendor has done the better job of making me happy as a geek.

Right now, I've about had it with Aureal because they've been promising Linux drivers for their Vortex lines of sound cards since November of 1999. They even announced that they'd have Linux drivers in February of 2000. Now March of 2000 is nearly over and there's been no sign of drivers from Aureal and there's been no mention of when we might actually see their promised drivers.

I'm about to rip that piece of crap soundcard out of my computer and install a SoundBlaster Live because at least Creative Labs has some Linux support. The video cards in my desktop machines at home are Matrox and 3Dfx and both are well-supported. I don't think I'll be buying a GeForce DDR any time soon if nVidia can't release decent Linux drivers.

And no, I don't want to buy OSS drivers for that Aureal soundcard....

The creative DVD-ram does not use traditional DVD's, but rather a special format only unsable by creative dvd-rams. They're not even playable in regular DVD-players. There is a picture of these square dvd-rams here.As I understand, the pioneer device's discs can be played in standard dvd-drives.

I would recommend the Creative Labs 4 point speaker system with sub:

4 point surround
my friend has them running from an Aureal Vortex 2 sound card, the sound is stunning! Even a friend who is into real Hi-Fi said he was impressed with how good they sounded. Sweet trebble + solid bass

Get someone to demo them for you, you won't be disapointed.

I do agree that the website should acknowledge Andrew Veliath, Lucien Murray-Pitts & Andrew de Quincey. However, I think Creative Labs is taking steps in the right direction and they could be taught to be more community friendly. They have given on their Creative Open Source page an email address for feedback, so use it! If you feel this strongly about it then also please contact Jon Taylor, the Creative Labs CVS maintainer for dxr2. It may also help the dxr2 project greatly if we organize a write-in campain requesting the source code to the dxr2 windows driver or the dxr2 specs.

Well, Creative's Linux development page references both kernel issues and Alsa issues, so I suspect they will directly support both. If they don't, the source will be GPL, so it's not a big deal.

Aureal, I don't know about. Currently they just refer Linux users to OpenSound.



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I'm sure that some compliments couldn't hurt their commitment to making the SB Live! work better with Linux (and other OSes, by the way). Pat them on their collective head and tell them they've been good. :)

Comments developer relations can be emailed to dev-questions@creative.com or submitted by web at http://developer.soundblaster.com/feedb ack/.

If anyone has any other addresses which may be appropriate, feel free to post 'em!

Kenneth Arnold