Well, my Pentium II motherboard bit the dust the other day (Thank You
American Electric Power!), so I went to the local computer parts store
in search of a new one. Being somewhat of a vacuum tube fan, I settled
on the AOpen AX4B-533TUBE board. Yes, this one has a vacuum tube. It
uses a dual triode (Sovtek 6922) as the audio amplifier. The board also
sports a 1.5Ghz Pentium 4 and DDR SDRAM, along with the usual bells and
whistles such as LAN, Serial, Parallel, etc.
The audio out of the board sounds great, as long as you make sure you
have the right impedance speakers/headphones plugged in. My normal 8
ohm headphones were badly overdriven, but plugging the computer into my
guitar amp (sounds weird, don't it?) delivered that nice, wide vacuum
tube tonality that normal sound cards just can't deliver.
I really gotta hand it to the guys at AOpen for delivering a wonderful
mix of new and old tech.
I do, however, really need to install a window in my case so I can bask
in the warm glow of the vacuum tube.
--
Christopher L McNabb
Operating Systems Analyst Email: cmcnabb_at_4mcnabb.net
Virginia Tech ICBM: 37.1356N 80.4272N
GMRS: WPSR255 ARS: N2UX Grid Sq: EM97SD
Received on Thu Nov 28 2002 - 07:39:00 GMT