Congratulations to Creative Labs X-Fi Elite Pro 7.1 Soundblaster BEST ELECTRONICS PRODUCT of the last 13 years.

Hello,

I really need to go to sleep and I am very tired and sleepy but I just occu red to me... I was thinking about and counting all the components that died /broke of my DreamPC from 2006 in the last 13 years and then I realize some thing here goes:

In 2006 I bought this DreamPC and literally almost everything died/broke or had to be replaced, let's go through the list:

1. Chieftec Case (did not provide enough airflow, replaced with antec 1200 case)
2. AMD CPU cooler (plastics holding it up broke, replaced with scythe coole r).
3. Corsair memory chip (static electric shock from plastic trying to improv e chieftec case airflow fall down on memory chip replaced by corsair)
4. Multiple asus motherboards (fried because of sli 7900 gtx graphics card overheating, replaced by winfast motherboard)
5. Hitachi Harddisks (developed bad sectors kept them loose in case to quic kly clean air filters)
6. Antec 1200 air filters (had to be removed, filters full of dust reduce a irflow to almost zero).
7. BenQ drive (developed a tray failure would not open anymore, still to be replaced)
8. USB card reader (fried brand new asrock motherboard cause of wrong usb p in placement in dark and didn't have all needed connections)
9. New card reader still working (but doesn't have a floppy drive).
10. HP L2335 Monitor died recently (unexplained death, but after hdmi exper iments, could be coincidence)
11. Logitech mouse (died, replaced by G3)
12. Logitech ultrax keyboard (keys broken off and worn out, springs failed) .
13. New logitech keyboard (just a couple of months old, key print already s tarting to be torn off)
14. Power supply OCZ stream died (probably static electricy shock from huma n body loaded from coach or perhaps glue inside it had something to do with it, replaced with seasonic s12).
15. Seasonic s12 had too short power cables at the time, still somewhat ext ension cord needed but still working :)
16. Both NVIDIA Graphics card 7900 GTX 512 MB had to be replaced with GT 52

0 cause of overheat.

1. GT 520 replaced with GT 1030 to improve GPU though GT 1030 does not sup port vga/dvi analog and does not support dual link, sucks connection wise ( does have hdmi).
2. Gigaworks S750 subwoofer died (replaced with Denon 1909 receiver).
3. Denon 1909 received still working but coffee spill from salesmen inside (SPDIF not working ?) good product a bit newer though not full 13 years ye t ;)
4. Winfast motherboard tiny little fan fails to spin up, annoying fan dest royed/removed, just using it's tiny little heatsink and fans from case to k eep it cool, so far not a problem =D (21. Old nec printer replaced brother printer very late, 2017 or so) (22. cable modem probably replaced throughout the years too) (23. did break antec 1200 top case fan sprint a little bit had to bent clip back to keep it in place, almost impossible to service properly for oil an d such, makes more noise now but used to it).
5. Asrock motherboard died cause of usb headers missing, could have avoide d death if it were there ;)

Creative Labs Gigaworks Speakers still going strong ! Creative Labs X-Fi Elite Pro 7.1 Soundblaster still going strong ! Creative Labs Breakout Box/Console I/O still going strong (though spdif not working ? not yet sure cause of it)

(Though lately console launcher somehow developed a crash due to driver/ins tallation mess, thx setup console not outputting sounds correctly but thank fully reassignment of speakers still works !)

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN I AM OFFICIALLY GOING TO RENAME

CREATIVE LABS

to

GREATIVE LABS

It is basically the ONLY product that has WITHSTOOD the TEST OF TIME for th e FULL 13 YEARS ! =D

Yes I have been very carefull with it, but I simply did not really need to touch it, except for reconnecting it when something died.

IT DID NOT NEED SERVICING. LOW HEAT, PASSIVELY COOLED WITH TINY HEATSINK.

You the electronics industry have TRIED TO KILL IT.... by creating ON BOARD crap solutions and COMPETITIVE CRAP but FAILED the product is too good, an d still very good, tough HDMI is starting to look attractive due to audio p rocessing capabilities of receiver.

HOWEVER.

ANYTHING THE DENON 1909 RECEIVER CAN DO SO CAN THE X-FI Elite Pro Soundblas ter ! =D especially in combination with Windows 7 if really desired (for a fraction of the price, just 200 euros x-fi vs 700 euros denon receiver):

surround sound upmixing for music ? CHECK (7 ch stereo) volume compensation (SVM) CHECK (dynamic volume) svm (dynamic eq (not sure)) Roughing up music via crystalize CHECK (auddessey/dynamic eq/matrix whateve r) Windows 7 audio processing CHECK (auddessey)

Though I haven't used svm much yet on x-fi should try though Though I do like what the receiver can do too ! ;) =D

THE SOFTWARE INDUSTRY HAS DONE EVERYTHING TO TRY AND KILL IT BUT KINDA FAIL ED TOO:

MICROSOFT WINDOWS 98 to XP driver changes, though I think I started with XP for DreamPC but still ! ;)

MICROSOFT NT TO XP driver changes ?

MICROSOFT XP TO VISTA/WINDOWS 7 driver architecture changes DEFINELTY

Microsoft Windows 10 probably more driver changes.

ONBOARD AUDIO processing/drivers... crappy...

OpenAL competition...

DirectX DirectSound changes ?!

MICROSOFT windows 7 HAL removal.

YES THE X-FI continues to function and YES Creative Labs successfully manag es to keep this device working and develivering AWESOME SOUND for 13 years straight ! =D with the occasionally cracking driver release yes but still never really was a problem in any game or playback of music, except loadin g screen in battlefield 2 ! ;) :)

SOME DAY I will compare Battlefield 2 on Windows XP with EAX vs Battlefield 2 on Windows 7 with Creative Alchemy... just to see which one sounds bette r The original (Windows XP/EAX/DirectSound/Ultra Soundpack in BF2) or the clo ne Windows 7/OpenAL/Creative ALchemy (tries to re-enable EAX support in gam es, not sure if it works :)).

For now I place my bets on Windows XP Battlefield 2.

Though you should hear Doom Brutal version 21 on my Windows 7 lol, it sound s terrafic too, uses OpenAL ;) :) Very happy with Doom Brutal Mod version 2

1 playing ultra realism LOL... One shot and you usually DEAD LOL Awesome fo r experience first person shooter player like me ! YESSSSSSSssss =D

Still Doom Brutal Mod v21 best FIRST PERSON SHOOTER EVERRrrrr and still goi ng strong and probably yet more to come... maybe new mod features in future and maybe even multiplayer in this ridicilous cool insane difficulty mode oh yeah ! ;) =D Haven't tried yet lol... but might soon =D

InstallShield did everything they possibly could to f*ck your drivers over, but still somewhat working LOL.

Windows admin rights/policies trying to prevent installation probably on no obie machines, though I run windows 7 in test mode anyway ;)

Can set policies in group policy for drivers, and set it to "warn" or so th at might help some users... user configuration somewhere in there it was, r ead about that.

I CAN'T BELIEVE IT how much broke and died and had to be replaced for other reasons.

So let's sum up the products that actually made it to the end somewhat:

AMD X2 3800+ processor, though it's original cooler failed and the NFORCE4 chipset is probably a dissassaster but perhaps no spy-ware in it ? Though I doubr that somewhat... crackling issues with some drivers.

Corsair Memory chips though one died, but got two for free from RMA-ing cor sair, so thumbs up for Corsair too ! ;)

Seasonsonic S12 power supply, still going strong, though cables a bit short here and there ! ;)

And ofcourse:

Creative Labs X-Fi Elite Pro 7.1 Soundblaster Creative Labs Gigaworks S750 satelite speakers with titanium tweeters !

These two products have stolen my heart (long ago) but continue to do so.

But now in a completely different way:

QUALITY wise... this is true quality people ! ;) =D

Now my biggest fear is that it might die soon too... but probably not thoug h ;) =D

So I declare Creative Labs the biggest winner of all ! You have far exceede d my expectations.

I wasn't even sure if I should have bought it at the time, but it was 100% the best 200 euros I ever spent, even though drivers was hell/though at tim es, still very much worth it.

Your SOUND QUALITY is competitive with HDMI, the difference is very little, perhaps below 1% even. One could even argue to analog sound of it is even slighty better, a little thougher/rougher around the edges ! ;) more curves in it maybe. HDMI might sound a bit synthetic, though this might also be 7 ch stereo and such causing this synthetic effect. Receiver audio processin g does make it sound clear but also somewhat synthetic.

Creative Labs DAC (digital to analog) are known for their superb signal to noise ratio and I can personally confirm this.

(The noise levels at max volume across analog cables is even lower than HDM I cables GO FIGURE ! ;) =D)

The products also look pretty awesome visually, which is a nice plus, thoug h all products do :) though the black/gold/silver adds a nice touch ;)

(Connection wise it could be a bit better though, no hdmi, and special cabl es was a bit whacky... though standard 4 tssr to 3 rca cables can work too) .

Runner up is Seasonic S12 power supply ! SECOND PLACE FOR YOU.

Third is AMD x2 3800+ processor. Still going strong ! ;)

And fourth is Corsair Memory chips. (Perhaps should have been place 2 or so , but don't know for sure what cause memory chip failure) and perhaps memor y chips not that special, not that complex, so I think 4th place is justifi ed.

But applause for Corsair too... cause GOD knows... this system did a lot of memory bandwidth trafficking LOL.

In the future I would like to see the following improvements to Windows:

Throttling for everything performance related:

1. Throttling of harddisk seeks per application (I might even attempt to de velop a i/o seek api interception software myself if it has to be).

I think this is critical for the future... SSDs too small and too expensive and too unreliable for now.

Throttling is required to keep applications behaving... currently some or m iss behaving like firefox and insane ammounts of cookie loading at same tim e ! ;)

1. Possibly even CPU throttling.

1. Possibly even memory bandwidth throttling.

THROTTLING of Performance Resources is the future of computing I am sure of that ! ;)

Bye, Skybuck ! ;) =D

P.S.: Moral of the story is: Wondering how mobile phone/tablet reliability will stack up vs PCs ! ;) Above story is not a good sign ! ;) =D

P.S.2: Microsoft Surfaces will probably fall apart when the glue evaporates ... glueing is a big fat NO-NO... never use GLUE in electronics (that got h ot) period ! ;) =D