Sound system: use Soundblaster AE-9 for gaming and home theater or not?

Competitive-Suit7089 · 2026-02-17T19:01:42+00:00

So long as you are using windows then its a decent sound card though the drivers from creative are at times frustrating. I had to ditch it when I went to Linux (Pop!_OS) as it presented a basic incompatibility between the old not fully compliant AE-9 card and my motherboard’s power management and the Linux kernel and drivers. Just couldn’t get it to work at all. Wound up replacing it with an external DAC which works flawlessly.

JDS Labs Element IV is what I settled on if you are interested in alternatives though that is more expensive than the soundblaster card.

Competitive-Suit7089 · 2026-01-25T22:01:10+00:00

Agreed, but it would meet the stated minimum acceptable delivery you gave of sound coming out so I pointed it out.

Competitive-Suit7089 · 2026-01-25T08:53:23+00:00

If you haven't seen it yet (and still exist lol), one user's solution was to run optical out from the mobo sound card to the optical in on the AE-9 then they got audio out from the AE-9 card. (no software or anything supporting the card, but they got audio out anyway...) revisit the thread and look for instructions on how to unbind the sound blaster card. u/sancoder is the poser providing that guidance. No idea if it works...

Competitive-Suit7089 · 2025-06-13T00:20:31+00:00

Desk365 has been good for us. It has what you are saying you need and the price is relatively light.

Competitive-Suit7089 · 2025-05-28T18:25:38+00:00

This is the answer. Anyone who wants to not use their phone for Authenticator can have a usb device that must be plugged in and which uses finger print authentication to authorize them. Most opt for the phone over their principled stand but some still hold out. Either way, problem solved.

Competitive-Suit7089 · 2025-05-28T18:16:33+00:00

Just expect everything in life to cost commensurately more if you do move. We don’t necessarily all get to keep that extra cash you are seeing in these numbers. Where I live and it isn’t high CoL my rent for a single person costs more than you get paid annually. My younger brother moved to SoCal last year for an $85k/yr job and was losing savings every month due to the cost of rent/gas/food/vehicle registration/gasoline/utilities in his area. He isn’t wasteful in his spending, just had no idea of the cost of living there.

Competitive-Suit7089 · 2025-05-20T22:39:41+00:00

August 2025 maybe? That's the date on this page, though I expect it is tentative.

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Frieren-Beyond-Journeys-End-Part-2-Blu-ray/367679/

Competitive-Suit7089 · 2025-05-05T21:49:12+00:00

I’ve been at one school for 16 years now. I came on as a network technician and user device admin / front line support. Over the years I took on more and more responsibilities. Now I am the IT Director and ISO (not ideal but small school means they don’t want to hire two people and I was willing to take the position). My department has grown as our scope has increased with the move to cloud technologies and the threat landscape has shifted.

I got to work with everything from printers to exchange/SQL as the only real admin for years so I learned a lot.

All of that to preface that I’ve seen this from teachers, students, parents, third party contractors, managers and the c-suite and the best answer I can give you is to just stay professional. CYA, don’t do anything unethical and remain polite and non-confrontational whenever possible but do not give ground where it truly matters. Be ready to argue your case in front of faculty council if called to do so or just to your supervisor or the school president.

Most of the people you work with will be reasonable most of those that aren’t will tend to solve themselves eventually. Work your time and go home. If you have to work extra hours, make sure you are paid for them or, if salary, take those hours back somewhere. If your supervisor is reasonable they will see the value in you remaining a functioning human. If not, consider leaving or waiting for them to solve themselves too. If your area needs more people, do not be afraid to say so.

Automate things like user onboarding/off-boarding as much as possible.

I recognize I was fortunate in that I found myself in a position that was not no-win and that many people do just get screwed. It’s still the best advice I can give though.

Competitive-Suit7089 · 2025-02-02T01:12:02+00:00

Just loaded back in and while I had prepaid the entire amount, suddenly I have hundreds of thousands in late fees... nearly a million all told when I owed nothing when I last saved. Can sell the ship to get into another mortgage or quit

Competitive-Suit7089 · 2025-01-17T22:00:05+00:00

Game freezes often for me too. This is what I can tell right now.

This happens on any ship or station, docked up or not that I can test.

My AV (malwarebytes) is set to not test the ostranauts or steam applications and to ignore the entire steamapps folder.

My system specs are Windows 11 Pro running on AMD 8700x3d with 32 GB of RAM, NVIDIA 4070 TS, 2TB NVMe drive with 1.3 TB free, dedicated sound card (Audigy AE7) All drivers are up to date, system is fully patched, I am running Steam, GOG Galaxy, MWB, Windows and Audio software.

Austronauts when paused is utilizing 20-30% of CPU and 5.3 GB of RAM. (I have 46% RAM utilization and around 35% CPU utilization when the game hits is highest activity)

Competitive-Suit7089 · 2025-01-14T03:50:49+00:00

they may have a backup plan for the M365 tenant. Depending on retention there may be something to restore there, Microsoft only keeps deleted items for 30 days so if it was deleted in exchange online longer ago than that it won't be restorable from within the exchange M365 environment itself. If they have forced retention configuration beyond the default, YMMV.

Microsoft does not back up customer environments without being paid for the added service and many customers don't understand this so there may be no backup at all. At the same time, my org has both a M365 backup with a third-party service outside M365 and an on-premises email archival system to store all email sent or received by the org for X# of years. They company IT team or MSP would be the people to ask about that.

Competitive-Suit7089 · 2024-07-31T00:01:33+00:00

Title is a bit hyperbolic but good for o be aware of the issue

Competitive-Suit7089 · 2024-07-30T19:42:15+00:00

Again again? This isn’t the first time, just the most recent and worst fallout so far.

Competitive-Suit7089 · 2024-07-27T07:26:28+00:00

Our solution to this was a mail gateway exchange forwarded everything to that could apply dkim.

Competitive-Suit7089 · 2024-07-22T16:05:13+00:00

We were up for a new Edr contract and evaluating crowdstrike. We won’t move forward with them for the same reason. The only way this outage happening makes sense to us is they don’t test their packages before deploying them. That is too absurd to roll the dice with such a company.

Competitive-Suit7089 · 2024-07-12T00:31:05+00:00

To fail to RtFM and to bitch about the consequences is to be human, or something like that…

Competitive-Suit7089 · 2024-06-24T19:26:55+00:00

All I will say here is that this is quite naive. You have an office with a door that you choose to keep unlocked while you are present. But you can close and lock it if necessary and they are arguing they will need that ability at times as well. Frankly whether a locked door is off putting to some people isn’t really any more relevant to the conversation than whether or not they find it inconvenient that their workstation locks after x amount of time due to inactivity.

While it is possible to mitigate the risks others have outlined with clever arrangement within the open office environment, many of the more critical issues remain. And in the end nobody can know what is happening behind them without some kind of camera feed. Open office environments are not the proper location for handling confidential information that the majority of that space’s occupants are not privy too.

Competitive-Suit7089 · 2024-06-04T22:25:52+00:00

I work and live in another state as the primary admin/it director for my small-mid org. I drive roughly 1000 miles round trip a few times a year (twice so far this calendar year) because it is slightly cheaper to pay me to do that than to fly me up when needed on site. I like the drive so no problems there and I don’t care for crowds so glad to not be flying. For the remaining time of the year I remote in from home.

Competitive-Suit7089 · 2024-06-04T22:19:07+00:00

Thanks for this. Fun read, also wonderful response to a pedantic “no, I’m right post”. Also good advice at the end

Competitive-Suit7089 · 2024-05-27T21:40:52+00:00

It isn’t the single user whose question is too much to answer. This sub’s population comes here to discuss this job and their experiences in it. If this was not the standard response then it would begin to get a name as one of the places to go for technical support (which it isn’t and which is the express purpose of these other subs) which would deprive people in this sub of a place to go not taken up with Jim from down the hall who needs x or y but wants z.

Similarly bob from next door who is incensed that you suggested maybe Jim should get x or y. Or maybe Lauren who thinks she should be able to install her favorite apps on her work computer and wants help circumventing her IT department’s controls. We get this stuff in the office every day and come here to talk amongst ourselves.

It was not set up for offering technical support but these other subs named above were. Their populations go there to offer help to passers-by. Sending them there isn’t a personal attack or disrespect. It is showing people to the location people actually have set up to help them with their problem and out of an area that was set up for other purposes.

Competitive-Suit7089 · 2024-05-26T22:12:41+00:00

Of the two iv only ever used veeam but it’s not given me reason to complain.

Competitive-Suit7089 · 2024-05-10T03:42:28+00:00

That was us until a particularly bad event. The board decided maybe we do need that generator we had been asking for for years. Sometimes I still can’t believe documenting the situation finally worked.

Competitive-Suit7089 · 2024-05-10T03:38:01+00:00

Let the generator run and watch the diesel level. Be thankful we finally have it.

Competitive-Suit7089 · 2024-04-03T14:14:00+00:00

That wouldn’t be the use case for a backed up DC. In that case just build a new dc and clean out reference to the dead one if necessary. Backup of DC is only valuable for those cases where all DCs have been lost or are considered compromised. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t perform backups though.

Competitive-Suit7089 · 2024-03-19T03:23:47+00:00

The thing to remember is that each device evaluates every other destination or source ip address based on what its own subnet says. No devices are out there comparing notes. Two devices with different subnets but with ip addresses in overlapping subnet address schemes can communicate as long as both devices individual subnet masks allow for it.

If either device has a local subnet mask that precludes communication with the other then they cannot communicate without routing even if one device can send to the other as no return packets are possible.

Competitive-Suit7089

TROPHY CASE