What strange interface do you use?
AES, MADI or Dante (Audio over IP) come to mind as strange one for home use.
So, I’m like, okay. Dacs and amps. A whole new world of products to explore when I don’t stick to the gaming label. Ended up with a Topping D50 and JDS Labs Atom. $300+ and that was half a year ago. No problems. No noise. Paradise.
Well, it could be that Creative Labs is riding on the good will they built up with their history with PCs and sound, but sell absolute garbage instead.
I use a Eventide H9000 as my I/O interface and it deals with my other dacs and adc’s (and other studio processors)
But that’s only for studio
If you may recall 10-15+ years ago most motherboards didn’t have built in audio. You were lucky to get a speaker that beeped on startup…
So creative labs actually made a decent product at the time but since times have changed its hard to differentiate themselves from the motherboard parts…
Edit: made my statements more generic because there are exceptions to every rule…
2 Likes
My AOpen board from 2001 would like a word with you!
Working drivers would be a huge plus over the 1GB Realtek Shitshow
It’s embarassing, I even tried a G6 external sound card and the mic-in was broken on it. smh.
Then you might be the right one to ask: Is MADI just plug’n’play or is it more work than that?
Lol I cannot claim to be an expert… honestly I’m just playing devil’s advocate right now. I fully expect my 170$ d10 dac plus atom amp to completely blow every soundcard on the market out of the water…sooooo soundcards are dead. Long live my RIP wallet…cause this hobby is only going to get more expensive…
It’s always more work lol. I don’t use it either so personally I don’t have as much experience with it. I know more about Dante but use AES/EBU
Personally thought if I had to choose I would use a MADI setup actually because it is easier and also lower latency from my experience (when I have tried it). That being said, it’s getting old and Dante has way more features so that would make more sense future proofing wise
1 Like
Okay, so if I ever feel like it, I will use my knowledge on networking gear and go Dante.
Future proofing is not that much of a concern, SPDIF is still going strong.
Also F off Discourse!
I just have one so called market laptop with Intel i5, added memory + SSD.
One scraps build Xenon Pc with 3 displays. Total cost was SSD drive. 
and one scraps build laptop with i3 i use to measure audio things, mic’s and software and so on.
When you’re working and troubleshoot with these P-O-S devices and software issues… that’s just too much. Don’t want to build or game anything with PC’s. 8h per day is enough.
No interest to build a 5k or +10k PC with the component value dropping like poop in toilet.
Just want my own gear to work fast with without any modding or build. Easy.
1 Like
I would say spdif and aes/ebu has more staying power than madi, Dante just makes way more sense for most people now if they were considering madi. I will agree that studio tech doesn’t become outdated that easily, but I think it will be phased out
1 Like
That’s a fair assessment. I think you can build a highly capable system from scratch and including peripherals for less than 800$. (Depending on use case of course) And it would require no troubleshooting. (Assuming nothing was DOA or installed incorrectly…)
Hell I had so much fun building mine I’d build yours for only the cost of components and shipping lmao…
1 Like
That would be good deal if i would only pay the shipping and you the components. 
Go as big you like.
Building is ok and sometimes even fun. Not a issue.
It’s more that i don’t even want to.
And i can you network audio from so no audio issues or cable’s with sound cards or none of that bs.
Looks like a nice couple of builds. My favorite part was that you went in for a keyboard and came out with an entire system - minus the keyboard 
I basically plan for my build to last as long as possible, so I overbuilt it a little…only thing I plan on upgrading is the graphics card probably in few years if it’s no longer performing how I want it to. Right now though? Perfect.
1 Like
Honestly at higher resolutions unless your are a streamer it’s basically pointless to upgrade anything that isn’t your RAM or GPU
Absolutely true. And unless you’re really into competitive gaming higher refresh rates have diminishing returns as you get higher and higher. The only exception is VR where a higher refresh rate is going to give a better, smoother, more immersive and probably less likely to give some of the motion sickness some people have associated with VR
Well the thing is the higher your resolution the more you dependent it is and the less your cpu affects the fps