I hope this hasnt been asked before - i have indeed used the search function

in any case, is there any way to give my soudn card any more juice? i know it will not increase quality, in fact it will probably just induce noise, artifacting, and possible death of my sound card. i just want to try it out

El Doug, you have seemed like a pretty good member your short time here. At least I am not aware of you pissing anybody off. But since our forum is all about increasing performance of our computers and their components, the fact that you are asking how to degrade a component doesn't make a whole lot of sense. As a matter of fact, that is one of the... I won't say stupid to spare your feelings... strangest hardware questions I have seen in a while. Please sit for a moment and think about things before you hit the "Post" button in the future.

First, I am going to say that I hope I don't go against what you said here, BA (if I am please, please, please let me know now). But I saw this a while ago, it was a link on an ALSA info site. It read something about modding a card with an emu10k1 something to a slightly more powerful version.
Also, if you've ever been to Afrotechmods.com, a while ago, one of his featured articles was about getting more from your sound card. Basically, he swapped out the caps that supply the out puts with power. It gave the sound card "sharper" sounding base.

The link is here, if your intrested
and why would you like to imporve the sound card's performance while sacrificing audio quality? I guess I am just a little confused.

Edit - oh wait, the part where you say "I just want to try it out" just clicked for me. If you do try, be careful not to damage other compenents, too.

Removing those caps will only alter how much signal is transmitted to your speakers. Caps have a certain frequency in which they resist more or less AC. Most of the time (I think its 1uF, 10uF or .1uF) for audio on the output.

Why do you need more juice? O.o Get a amp, thats what they do...Theres an Amp in your speakers.

Unless you want it for headphone use, then use a LM386 (its pretty simple..)

EDIT-Wait a sec, what do you mean by "juice"? Im assuming you want more power out of your card or do you want more bass (or "boom) from it? If you want more bass, get better speakers. If you have good enough speakers, get a pre amp maybe? Or a filter to filter out the bass section of audio (less than 150Hz.)

No, that was a good post FH. Matter of fact I'll hit you with rep for the sound card upgrade info.

Quote: Originally Posted by Fire Hawk First, I am going to say that I hope I don't go against what you said here, BA (if I am please, please, please let me know now). But I saw this a while ago, it was a link on an ALSA info site. It read something about modding a card with an emu10k1 something to a slightly more powerful version. Also, if you've ever been to Afrotechmods.com, a while ago, one of his featured articles was about getting more from your sound card. Basically, he swapped out the caps that supply the out puts with power. It gave the sound card "sharper" sounding base. The link is here, if your intrested and why would you like to imporve the sound card's performance while sacrificing audio quality? I guess I am just a little confused.