I did the deed and retired my Sound Blaster Play USB for a Fosi Audio DAC-Q4 on my modern machine. This is also the first DAC I've ever owned.

Well, technically that's not true, sound cards are DACs, this is just the first time I've owned a stand-alone one like this. The question is, was it worth the cost ($69) to switch?

For me, the short answer is yes.

I mean, this is really no different than just buying a better sound card. However, I have a few problems with my modern machine. My ASUS TUF B450-PRO Gaming on-board audio kinda sucks. It's very noisy, and it always bothered me, especially since I almost always use headphones. I also don't have any more internal PCIe to use a dedicated sound card, so I went with a Sound Blaster Play USB device and that solved my noise issues. All this time, that's worked fine, but I've been wanting something better. There are limits to what that Sound Blaster Play USB can do, even though it's a fantastic option for it's low price point. I would personally recommend it to anyone looking for good low-cost USB sound for a PC.

I went looking at external sound cards and DACs to see if anything caught my eye, and I just kept landing back on that Fosi Audio DAC-Q4. There are a lot of USB sound options out there at a wide range of price points, many seem to generally get good reviews, but I wanted to keep it all under $100. I came to the realization long ago that I never really use any of the bundled software with most sound hardware, personally, I find it pretty useless and bloated. I'm paying for so called "features" I'll never use. I also wanted physical bass, treble, and volume controls. I hate having to open up a piece of software to adjust such simple things. Lastly, I wanted an all in one option to take up less space. No need to use an external amp or speakers to plug my headphones into. Well, the DAC-Q4 did all of that for me with it's built in headphone amp.

Does it sound better? Objectively, I think it sounds much better than my Sound Blaster Play USB, but it should. Not becasue it's a DAC, but becasue it uses higher quality hardware. It's not like I'm some audiophile who thinks a DAC is the end all be all of digital audio. I personally think once you start getting above the $150-$200 range in terms of most modern PC audio, especially in the world of DACs, it's often more like modern audio snake oil than anything else. Sound is very objective, and most of the high-end DACs on the market all use one of the same 4 chips. I think it often comes down to the supporting hardware and amps being used more than anything else.

For me, I just wanted something different, that met my personal needs, sounded better than what I had, and at a decent price. The DAC-Q4 did that. I'm happy with it, I think it sounds great, and I love the fact I got those old Logitech speakers off my desk. Oh, and I didn't buy the IEMs. For now, I'm just going to stick the Sony earbuds and headphones I already own. They work good enough for now to hold me over until I can find a better set to use that I think I'll actually like. The more I looked at IEMs, the more I'm questioning if I would like them. They don't look all that comfortable since I don't like anything going into my ears. If you've ever use them, feel free to share your feedback. I've never used them.

386SX wrote on 2026-02-12, 17:20:

Changed for the hundred times my main desktop PC back to Raspberry Pi 5 from the i3-12100F I would use if the Intel Arc A310 ECO didn't have the most annoying fan cooling logic in history. Most probably the fan is not supposed to work without the Windows software part that control or try to control the fan speed, so even with many firmware upgrades and drivers using linux the GPU fan speed up and down in a random way and every few seconds even in the most idle scenario with 40/50°C. I would be happier to even use a Geforce FX 5800 Ultra in this moment for the probably less annoying noise. So I'll have to make a simple mod and connect the fan to the mainboard and set it fast enough to cover most usages in OpenGL.

I've heard about that. I was looking at cards to work around the poor performance with Intel integrated graphics in Linux (3D seems to perform the same as Windows, but basic 2D desktop use spikes the "blitter/3D" usage so high that it can't even play back a DVD rip without dropping frames). I'm hesitant to get an Intel card because of that performance problem and the A series' poor power management. I was looking at the Nvidia A400 at first, but reviews show that the RTX 3050 has low idle power consumption with two monitors. It depends on what I can get at a decent price because I don't need much performance (considering that I've been on integrated graphics for this long). I'd honestly be fine with a T1000 (that's what my laptop has), but that's the oldest generation of Nvidia card supported by the current Linux driver.

StriderTR wrote on 2026-02-14, 15:05:

I came to the realization long ago that I never really use any of the bundled software with most sound hardware, personally, I find it pretty useless and bloated. I'm paying for so called "features" I'll never use. I also wanted physical bass, treble, and volume controls. I hate having to open up a piece of software to adjust such simple things. Lastly, I wanted an all in one option to take up less space. No need to use an external amp or speakers to plug my headphones into. Well, the DAC-Q4 did all of that for me with it's built in headphone amp.

I don't like that software either. The quality isn't very good, and they always seem to have environment effects and "virtual surround" effects that sound bad enough to make audio completely unusable and randomly enable themselves. I used the EQ in my audio driver's control panel to compensate for a midrange hump in my speakers, but I never liked that because it was limited to that one computer. I bought a bunch of parts to build a notch filter, but I never built it. I need to some day, but I also want some speakers that fit better on my desk. I currently have those speakers laying on their sides under my monitor.

lti wrote on 2026-02-14, 19:17:

I don't like that software either. The quality isn't very good, and they always seem to have environment effects and "virtual surround" effects that sound bad enough to make audio completely unusable and randomly enable themselves. I used the EQ in my audio driver's control panel to compensate for a midrange hump in my speakers, but I never liked that because it was limited to that one computer. I bought a bunch of parts to build a notch filter, but I never built it. I need to some day, but I also want some speakers that fit better on my desk. I currently have those speakers laying on their sides under my monitor.

I'm considering incorporating this DAC into a DIY "sound station" to have all the audio from my DOS, Win 98, RetroPie, and modern PC feed into one 90's era looking stereo mini rack to sit on my desk. Right now, all of it is handled by a 4-way source selector to swap between systems, a cheap 2-channel mixer to combine the AWE64 and Wavetable Pi outputs from my DOS system, ground loop isolators on all the analog connections, and now this new DAC. It works well, but it's all very hodgepodge and messy.

If I do design some sort of all-in-one for my needs, I would build in a nice retro LED audio level visualizer, each analog connection would be ground loop isolated internally (no more external units), and I would slide the DAC in, as-is, for my modern system. All selectable with good old toggle and/or push button switches. Have everything I need in one package.

The more I sit here and think about it, the more I want to do it. Would be a fun project. 😀

I 'convinced' two netgear AX range extenders to create a wholly isolated wifi bridge, for use with an HDMI slingbox. (it uses TCP/UDP to broadcast a video signal over 'gigabit ethernet'.)

AX is up to 1300mbit, which meets the speed needs.

This is for an upcoming prospectus meeting for our shareholders and board members. The organizer wants a secondary display set up to mirror the main presentation, and the locale they have picked is not conducive to putting a super long cat5e cable on the ground.

I'll have unobstructed view between the extender nodes though, so I can put the secondary display anywhere in the room.

I just got done testing out my handiwork. I am pleased.

The test involved broadcasting around a corner and through a door.

Its all rainbows and sinshine.

Fixed my Z370M Gaming Pro AC motherboard.

I resoldered the dislodged inductor. I opted to use an iron for this which made it rather awkward given the location of the component. This repair won't win any style points, but it works.

Got it installed in a new case and am going to set this up as my workshop PC. Didn't notice until after installing it that I put the headstink upside down. But I don't need to install a GPU, so it's fine.

I shucked a 6 TB hard-drive from an external 3.5 USB disk that I got for "cheap" from Amazon, only to realize that it was an WD Blue SMR. Too bad I needed that extra disk for my NAS but I'm not going to use it for that...

Long gone are the days of finding a CMR Green in there...

At work we have about 200 6TB disks (from HPE servers, but they are a mix of WD and Seagate) sitting there waiting to be recycled, and I can take none of them 🙁

Yes we have the same policy and it hurts to see hundreds of drives going to a recycling company that we have to pay for taking care of our "e-waste" knowing that these completely functional drives will be sold on the used market.

wierd_w wrote on 2026-02-19, 21:40:

Long gone are the days of finding a CMR Green in there...

I got tricked by one reviewer who said there was a CMR drive in it. I guess the manufacturer puts whatever is the cheapest option at the time they build it.

Burning some credits messing around with Seedream 4.0, having a little fun, ended up with this monstrosity. 🤣

I turned on my laptop (my last modern Windows machine), and I see that the start menu is worse now. I still don't know who thought it was a good idea to recommend random files (it's worse at work because it recommends random files in shared folders that I probably shouldn't have access to), but now the "All" button got replaced. The "category" view throws almost every program I intentionally installed (not what Microsoft forced on me because they don't understand consent) into the Other category. The Accessibility category being huge seems appropriate with my recent loss of fine motor control (I noticed that I constantly overshoot buttons when I'm using a computer) and associated frustration. Strangely, I was soldering 0.65mm pitch SMDs with an iron just a couple weeks ago.

I also see that the original Windows 10 Mail program has reappeared, even though it was replaced with that ad-filled and feature-reduced Outlook before Windows 11 was released. Why?

Fortunately, I turned that laptop on to install Linux. I'm going to try to dual-boot, even though that's a terrible idea with modern Windows. It's just that this is the only computer I have that has enough fast storage to handle VHS archival, even though the combination of software and hardware that actually works for that purpose is Windows XP/7 era. This laptop is the only Windows 10/11 system I've tried where the capture dongle worked.

I tried Pop!_OS for the Cosmic DE. It still feels unfinished, but that's expected right now. It's new and still in active development. It isn't too laptop-friendly (only having a single shared cursor speed slider and not letting the GPU fully idle down, but maybe that's just because I was running it from live media), so I'll keep it in a VM to watch its development. The laptop is going to get Fedora because I haven't tried it on real hardware yet and it has built-in hybrid graphics support. Video codecs seem a little annoying, but maybe the "freeworld" codecs will stick (and get Neil Young stuck in my head).

I was in the process of repairing a Matrox Millennium II and got different BIOS files for it. I's interesting to note that in BIOS 1.1 there is a "MISTRAL" string at the beginning, which disappeared later. It looks like Mistral was the internal codename for the MGA-2164W chip used. I din't know that.

From what I found:
Storm: codename for the MGA-2064W chip used in the Matrox Millennium
Zephyr: codename for the MGA-1064SG chip used in the Matrox Mystique
Mistral: codename for the MGA-2164W chip found in the Matrox Millennium II
Toucan: codename for the G100
Titan: codename for the G200
Athena: codename for the G400

Saw a listing for an Nvidia Tesla K80, saw how cheap it was, and went down a rabbit hole looking for the best compromise between cheap and new on the Tesla *4s to complement the RX 570 in my workstation rig (R7 2700X/16GB (for now)). Decided if I wanted to go that way it would be easier to just try to get a 4060 or something.

Added some more software to my mini-PC. I seem to have made the jump to Windows 11 of after my 10 box died last year, although I hate the changes to the UI and the AI crap, but I concentrate on what I need to do. Which is basically photography, old games and some office stuff. I put the old hard drives in an external array, made sure it worked, copied some files, and turned it off - all a few months ago; not turned on since. I need to see to that.

I've installed LibreOffice rather than faff about trying to install old versions of MS Office (I have legitimate copies of Office 97, Office 2010, and I think Office 2013 and Office 2016 somewhere). Seems to work OK for my usage, mostly I use an iPad these days anyway.

Toyed with the notion of getting another mini-PC to install linux on, but the impetus isn't enough to raise the task priority sufficiently to overcome my inertia, let alone open my virtual wallet...

I really need to lay off the AI tools.... 🤣

Doom - https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/2pg … -the-cyberdemon

Commander Keen - https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/huO … -an-alien-world

thats Doom 2, not 1

Living wrote on 2026-02-26, 10:09:

thats Doom 2, not 1

The Cyberdemon appears in both. I don't see anything in the flic that distinguishes it as one or the other.

StriderTR wrote on 2026-02-25, 21:50:

Doom - https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/2pg … -the-cyberdemon

I am happy to see that the AI also couldn't figure out where the eyes were supposed to be in that terrible blocky sprite from 1993.

dr_st wrote on 2026-02-26, 13:48:

I am happy to see that the AI also couldn't figure out where the eyes were supposed to be in that terrible blocky sprite from 1993.

I also like how the closer we get to the face, it decided the blocky sprites needed more detail ... that tongue and teeth. 🤣

I was just having fun taking images and seeing what it could do with them, even converting photos to "pixel art", like below.

Well... I'm a bit sad about this in a kind of "Oh... well... I guess that's it then..." kind of way. Let me tell you guys a story.

I have been thinking about decluttering my PC tower a little bit since upgrading my GPU a couple months ago and noticing just how much "stuff" I have in the way of my GPU fans compared to most modern builds.

A year and a half ago I had some odd ethernet related issues which at the time seemed like, of all things, a failing ethernet controller on my motherboard (Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite with Intel i211 GbE). Just to be done with it I threw in an old Intel 1000 CT PCI-E ethernet card I had on hand and have been using that ever since.

Along with that, I have been using an ASUS Xonar DX PCI-E sound card for like ~18 years because it just works and I've never had a single problem with it. I currently use the optical output to an SMSL SD-793II DAC. I tried switching to the onboard Realtek sound a few years ago and for whatever reason it just would not work properly no matter what I did. It made no sense because this is the kind of thing that should just work, and in fact, Realtek audio does "just work" on literally every other device I have set up or worked with in the past 15 years. At the time I determined that I just didn't have time to mess with it, and it didn't make sense to blow money on a USB DAC when my SMSL already sounded great over optical, so I just threw my old Xonar back in and it has been working flawlessly ever since.

So, here I am in 2026 with a 10-15 year old PCI-E ethernet card and an 18 year old sound card that was basically acting as an optical output, with them both blocking at least some airflow for my Zotac RTX 4070 Ti Super AMP Holo 16GB (stupid name, good card).

Now, as a general rule, when your GPU has almost as many gigabytes of VRAM as the number of years your sound card has existed, it is time to reevaluate your build!

Anyway, I did some googling and saw that the i211 ethernet issues are a known problem with lots of boards and can sometimes be related to other hardware in the system for whatever reason, so I figured I'd give it a try now that I have a different GPU, and I've updated the BIOS a couple times. So, I switched back to the onboard i211 and for now it seems okay. I believe it used to disconnect when resuming from sleep, and it doesn't seem to be doing that now, but time will tell.

As for the sound card... I just re-enabled the Realtek audio, plugged in my toslink cable and everything is just working without me having to do anything else at all. I have no idea why it caused me so many problems before, or what has changed.

So... *sigh* ... the Xonar DX has been taken out of my system too.

Guys, this is definitely a record for me. I used the same sound card for several hours nearly every day, across multiple builds, spanning Windows Vista to Windows 10, in my main PC for gaming, music and everything else... for around 18 years! I have lots of computers and components that I've had longer than that, or that I still use regularly... but I can't think of anything else that comes close to the hours this Xonar DX must have on it in a primary daily-use computer. The closest would probably be my Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme, which I used in my main rig for about 12 years (2007-2019, when I bought this X570 board).

It is the end of an era for me. In the 27 years I have had my own computer, this is the only time I have intentionally NOT used a dedicated sound card since moving to the Nvidia Soundstorm MPC-T on my Abit NF7-S in 2003 (from a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz I think). I will make sure that the Xonar DX gets a good cleaning and goes back in its box (which I still have) until I need it again for a... *gulp*... retro build. 🙁

Also, since the Xonar DX required its own power source for a cleaner signal, I removed the molex to floppy power adapter that I had to use on my PSU. This seemed really funny with the big modern GPU in the way as I did it. I don't think floppy power connectors and 12VHPWR connectors are found in the same PCs too often.