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Are you sure you weren't the egg?

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/li ... erm-or-egg

glurk wrote:This should work, right? I mean, all of the connectors fit and everything.

usb.jpg

I just did this. The audio version of it anyway and some of it's virtual. Ok I'll try and explain.

My friend gave me a rather nice sound card and break out box. The problem is that the card is quite old and doesn't work on 64bit systems. Boooo. Options - retrograde to XP 32 bit, buy the next card up in the series which is 64bit compatible. Well I'm not up for either of those just yet so I'm experimenting and this is where I've go to so far. I haven't been bothered to try the card in yet but the prelim stages of workarounds have already produced some nice benefits. FWIW the card in question is a MOTU 324 with a 1224 brak out box.



So. This is where I am at the moment with things.

My OS is windows 8.1 64bit.
Sound card is EMU 1616 with break out box. I have an optical output running to a budget DAC which in turn runs to my Marantz PM4200 analogue amp then to my headphones which are Beyer Dynamics DT100's. That's been my set up for a while now. It does the job.

Problem. To test the MOTU (even to see if it will run on my motherboard) I need XP but I can't even get it installed on a spare internal drive cause I'm too lazy to hook up my dvd drive as I'm planning a hardware update soon involving solid state drive, new psu etc etc. Everything's bought just waiting for the courage and time to arrive (there's watercooling involved). Tried installing XP from a flash drive and getting it to work was just getting tooooo complicated.

Thought I'd have another go a few nights ago and did some more internet reading. That's when I found the virtual machine suggestion. I thought I'd tried it before with no luck but this seemed worth a go. If just out of curiosity. Went with Oracle VM VirtualBox. Installed it, installed XP into it and installed the extra modules to assist with the screen res.

So. Xp installed and up and running in VM VB. Created a network drive to my music folder on my 'actual' pc so I can access my music in the 'virtual' xp. It's running via the EMU 1616 even though I haven't directly installed the drivers for it. I have installed the drivers for the MOTU but they don't do anything without the card in. I don't think it will work but I guess we'll find out. The one thing I wanted to say was that in VB I'm running WMP classic and the sound is awesome. Seriously. That was the unexpected benefit. Playing some of my FLAC albums and the sound clarity is better than any combination I've tried on my main pc. I even went to it and downloaded WMP classic for 8.1 expecting it to be just awesome there too but it wasn't. It was muddy and undefined. In the virtual XP it's clear, sharp, punchy. So I'm pretty pleased but I don't know how lol.

There's probably a simpler way to achieve the same results but this is working pretty well. I haven't even tried it through my speakers yet so that'll hopefully be another treat.

There you go glurk - it should work, right? - sometimes it does. Plug, Install, Pray.



Window reduced to show 8.1 desktop behind, VB control window and EMU sound control.



UPDATE:

Think this one's beat me. The MB layout was placing the card too close to my graphics card and it wasn't showing up in the virtual devices anyway. Still, not a complete waste. Unexpected sound improvement and it encouraged me to clean the machine and remove the usual 3 tonnes of dust.

Welcome to summer in Ireland. There's a price for being the Emerald Isle.



.... then an alien craft tried to land. Some say it was a mythical beast called "The Sun". I dunno ... I've never seen it.



Panic over. Our rain defense barrier held and the earth is safe once more.

haha. great pics.

Awesome Trav! Thanks for sharing those. Looks a lot like Lake Tahoe's afternoon's lately.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0gnHRLZpzE

Tahoe27 wrote:Awesome Trav! Thanks for sharing those. Looks a lot like Lake Tahoe's afternoon's lately.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0gnHRLZpzE

I love a good thunder storm. We don't even get those properly. Just steady, miserable rain. It's still raining. It might actually be too damp for thunder and even fish possibly ... and it's bleeding freezin'.

Strange all this talk about thunderstorms. We had a wild one this morning in Los Angeles... and we never have thunderstorms, especially in the summertime. Winter is usually when the deluge comes. I almost freaked out because my internet cut out for 5 hours. What would my weekend be without a little ZKS.com

Big duststorm headed our way -- they can be pretty surreal. I'll post a pic if I catch one...

Barry S. wrote:Strange all this talk about thunderstorms. We had a wild one this morning in Los Angeles... and we never have thunderstorms, especially in the summertime. Winter is usually when the deluge comes. I almost freaked out because my internet cut out for 5 hours. What would my weekend be without a little ZKS.com

Not to mention cars burning up on the freeway yesterday! I don't suppose those thunder storms came without lightening. Pretty scary. It's so dry here in northern California, a little lightening and we would go up in a puff of smoke.