Category Archives: Rant

Audiophile 2496 x64 Rant

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Okay- this is a pure rant with nothing of value to anyone but myself.

I’ve been using an M-Audio Delta Audiophile 2496 for years now in 32-bit systems: both Windows XP and Vista.  This is a great card- massive clarity above anything else I’ve ever tried.  I’ve produced a ton of projects off of this card and it is tightly integrated into my studio cabling at this point.

Recently, I upgraded my hardware and took advantage of 8GB of RAM.  To actually utilize that amount of RAM, you need a 64-bit OS. The whole point of this rant is that M-Audio still do not have any drivers for this card for 64-bit Vista.  They don’t have any public beta drivers either- the drivers in private beta.

I signed up for the beta but am not holding my hopes very high.  I suppose I can just deal with onboard audio until they release the drivers- but I wouldn’t want to actually record anything using that…

Just a real cramp in my gut.  Let’s have at them drivers, already!

What’s Up with Flash Player 10 Final???

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It seems a lot has changed from the release candidates to the final version- a lot of things people did not expect.  For instance, last minute surprise changes to the Sound API… and then the previously announced security changes that Adobe has, in fairness, warned us about since Flash Player 9.

I’ve stumbled across something that I cannot understand in one of our Java applications.  This is something that worked fine in 10.0.0.525 but is now broken in 10.0.12.36:

Simply put- a SWF (any SWF) that has loaded just fine in all previous versions of the Flash Player (including FP10 RC builds) now completely fails to load.  I’ve looked at a number of different things but cannot figure this one out!

I’ll update this as I find answers.

Web Host Transfer Complete

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Yesterday, I became so absolutely fed-up with the hosting provider I’ve had since 2002, PowWeb, that I decided to pack up and switch over to BlueHost. After a year of lousy customer service and even worse actual hosting services, it was time to call it quits. I still have some client sites with them, and will recommend they transfer as well once their contracts are up.

The primary reason for jumping ship was that, over the past few months, the database servers were slower than molasses during an arctic winter. This website is heavy on that end, of course, and at times it would take 30-60 seconds to load! That’s insane. On the new host it is instantaneous. I’ve noticed that static sites load a lot faster as well- even large photographs through Flash (FileReference) have a much higher delivery speed.

PowWeb was bought out by Endurance International last year and ever since then, things have been getting worse and worse. I feel a bit bad having to leave after so many years- but am very pleased with BlueHost so far. I heard lots of negative comments about the new owners during the takeover, but I like to be fair and give people the benefit of a doubt… bad choice, in this particular case.

Although the DNS propagation is ongoing, just about everything is in place. My ISP only has the updated DNS records for half of the domains- so I’m actually writing this update through VPN to my office machine.

Many thanks to those who recommended hosting providers after my initial rant. Very helpful information!