No, Microsoft's MIDI renderer is complete shit. Or did you mean on Linux? True, one can install replacements.

The sample being 30,000 years old doesn't seem significant because it's quite recent relative to the history of life, and even primates. The same kind of virus or a close relative is probably still around and the sample age probably has nothing to do with its size, but rather a happenstance of observation in that we tend to study old things harder than we do current things, and thus notice more.

God likes 'em big

For one thing, there are still a couple months before that birthday. For another, was Doom II the last notable PC game to use FM sound?

Ironic that I was reading this while listening to an NSF file, which is music designed for playback through an 8-bit soft synth.

"Decades", plural? That'd be 1994. As I understand it, PC games were still including FM soundtracks back then. For example, Doom II has its 20th birthday this September. Software-mixed tracker soundtracks came into use on PC around the time of Jazz Jackrabbit, also in 1994.

USB theoretically has 127 slots to add a card in, if you buy a lot of 7-port hubs. A USB audio interface also lies outside the electrically noisy interior of a PC chassis.

It is easy to make good DACs these days. Basically any DAC, barring a messed up implementation, is likely to sound sonically transparent to any other in a normal system. When you look at the other limiting factors (amp, noise in the room, speaker response, room reflections, etc) you find that their noise and distortion are just way below audibility. Ya, maybe if you have a really nice setup with a quiet treated room, good amps, and have it set for reference (105dB peak) levels you start to need something better than normal, but that isn't very common. Even then you usually don't have to go that high up the chain to get something where again the DAC is way better than other components.

Now that said, there can be a reason to get a soundcard given certain uses. For example you don't always want to go to an external unit, maybe you use headphones. In that case, having a good headphone amp matters and onboard sound is often remiss in that respect (then again, so are some soundcards). Also even if you do use an external setup, you might wish to have the soundcard do processing of some kind. Not so useful these days, but some games like to have hardware accelerated OpenAL.

Regardless, not a big deal in most cases. Certainly not the first thing to spend money on. If you have $50 speakers, don't go and buy a $100 soundcard. If you have a $5000 setup, ok maybe a soundcard could be useful, but only in certain circumstances.

As a side note, the noise in a PC isn't a big issue. Properly grounding/shielding the card deals with it. A simple example is the professional LynxTWO, which is all internal yet has top notch specs, even by today's standards. http://audio.rightmark.org/tes...

We'll know it's a naming rights ploy if Elon Musk tries to buy the naming rights to something near Thomas Edison National Historical Park in New Jersey.

If dead people can vote, they can go to war also.

There's already an American League Championship Series, and it's the championship of one of the two conferences in Major League Baseball. Its winner plays the winner of the National League Championship Series in the World Series. Any ideas for new names for the World Series that aren't biased toward the American League or National League?

Small.com is privately registered and parked. Large.com is registered to "Consultants at Large" but returning NXDOMAIN. This leaves Medium.com.

That's something nobody's going to copy. </sarcasm>

If HUE represents laughter, then in which language does "LOL" sound like "LIGHTNESSLIGHTNESS" or "SATURATIONSATURATION"?

...underwater in a thunderstorm while blindfolded.