Indeed, this test shows the SB X-Fi is rigorously perfect for sound output to human ears. The "A/D Converter Frequency Response" section shows that you should choose a different card if you want to use it as a ghetto oscilloscope.
Creative Labs has that reputation, and they were dicks in general but funnily I had some real "audiophile" sound with Sound Blaster Live! and Audigy 1 cards.
Creative drivers were shit and I was even once stranded - I needed to download a CD image from unofficial source to get sound under Windows, whereas finding and using the DOS driver took me minutes (!). But a russian guy made a great driver that always worked and is perfect if you only care about getting an output (so no EAX gaming shit) and even the latency is low I think. It's still here http://www.kxproject.com/
One weird property of Live/Audigy cards is the output for rear speakers has better DAC and signal path, rated at 107dB signal/noise. The driver swaps front and rear speaker output by default. Sound quality was really fscking perfect as far as any regular usage is concerned. Now I have a Xonar DX which is much better (116dB SNR) but it feels like just the same and my sound is worse because I'm using it in a smaller, worse room.
So, to get cheap ass audiophile sound, old Live! and Audigy 1 are or were great. I would buy them for a pittance. Killed a great many of them though, they're easy to kill when you put them in another PC (be very careful and always fasten the screw even if you're thinking of running it temporarily unscrewed while setting up your PC hardware)
The transition from ISA to PCI killed it. Even Sound Blaster 128 (a.k.a Ensoniq cards) didn't support OPL2/OPL3 modes, which peeved me.
By the way the emulation from Dosbox is not ideal, be it quality or the high CPU use, but it does the job (the PC speaker emulation is worse lol)
Xonar DSX is an affordable card with that real time encoding you want/need (has DTS Interactive, not Dolby digital live but I suppose either will work). More than $30 and it has the DACs as well, but you won't find a sound card without DACs except maybe USB to S/PDIF adapters which won't have the feature.
Using analog cables isn't that dirty : it may look messy but that's all. Modern sound cards will easily be as good as your receiver, or even outmatch it. (while the DSX's DACs should be a fair bit worse, but likely good enough most times). In fairness, at that level the quality is so high that it doesn't matter anyone, everything sounds the same - if sounds volumes are adjusted to be the same - and a good DAC's job is to sound entirely neutral so you can't tell a good DAC from another one. Speakers and room accoustics (and the files, CD or game you're playing) is a ton more important.
Oh right, it's the Celeron J1900 (sold on standalone ITX boards) that was quad core.
What's more Virtualbox is made by the same vendor that makes Solaris and using it is a piece of cake..
Its page implicitly but strongly says it's for people who register as a CUDA developer.
The one with quad core 22nm Atom (named Celeron N2820 or N2830) should be great and is cheap and low power. Dangerously cheap too!
Probably higher perf/watt than cell phone and tablet ARM.
I'm not aware of asymetric Ethernet standard, for instance. Fiber to the home is basically last mile Ethernet, and in some markets where residential ISP just sell DSL service without bothering to limit speeds (and where caps are unheard of) you are really able to get a symmetric connection. Other providers may artifically limit the connection to an asymmetrical one like 100/10, 100/30 or 100/50.
.. there's shit tons of fiber where I live, only it's under the streets but doesn't reach premises. No incentive or obligation to hook it up to cramped four-story 19th century buildings, where most of the flats are rented.
Simply put no one will pay for doing whatever complicated digging and stuff to do in the building just so I can upgrade speed. And oh, you often have a succession of building less than five meter wide, in a one-way street.
Regular DSL speed is high. VDSL is perfectly useless : needs to be less than 1km away from the central.
The DSL qualifies as "high bandwith" and is nice, only the upload speed is 1Mbps. That's frustrating and slow, but upgrading such connections is considered a low priority. Not enough flats in the building makes it low priority for fiber deployment as well.
Whatever, I'd be happy with anything that increases the upload speed by 100x.
That makes Android java apps non native on their own platform.
I think a 16:10 display is sweet for video. More surface for 4:3 content and still very good for 1.85 content.
One little thing I wonder about.. will services/daemons eventually be as easy to disable, enable etc. as under Windows 2000/XP? It's a bit hilarious that almost fifteen years ago any kid could deal with that by mousing around but for me (user, perhaps basic sysadmin of debian/buntu systems) dealing with
It's just like an instance of that overused webcomic where a guy boasts he can use 4096 CPU, but playing a flash video is too hard.
** you can always apt-get remove or apt-get install a deamon, and everything is dealt with to perfection in just a few seconds. wow! I can do the complex thing quickly, it's the simple thing that would take me a month to learn properly.
Hoping it goes through.. I can simply use Mint 17 Mate as an "LTS" but why not have a try at stuff from the other side of the fence, for once. And btw not only old 32bit PC still are working and usable.. with e.g. 3GB memory or even 4GB, using 32bit OS instead of 64bit OS can be slightly useful. Firefox is nerfed at 2GB instead of consuming all memory + swap.
It's now possible to get a 24" 1920x1200 for 200 euros - and that's an IPS one with low power use due to the LED lighting. The 60Hz refresh still sucks, but given that I have trouble understanding the "monitors were better in the 90s" crowd. I STILL use a CRT mind you (and need to get a better one. Had a great 80 pound, > 200 watt bastard but it sort of dropped dead from one day to the other)
For God's sake, stop researching for a while and begin to think!
