[rescue] The fat lady. . .

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Thu, Dec 27, 2001 at 03:49:15PM -0600, Bill Bradford wrote:
> I dont know that you can drive a soundcard "too hard"; these 
> just *died*.  Course, they were both in an ABit BH6 motherboard
> that has since gone to meet its maker, so maybe the mobo was to
> blame.  Never had problems with anything else in the machine, but
> the board (or the cpu that was in it) gave up a couple months ago.

If you drive the amp to distortion then they are being driven too hard.  For
quality reasons, amps on soundcards should be avoided, and if really 
unavoidable, turned as low as possible.  Then, for best results keep the cable
from the soundcard to the amplifier as short as possible.  This relates to
why microphone preamps are often placed at the feet of vocalists rather than
just throwing them in the control room with the rest of the recording gear.

Also, on the SBLives, I've noticed that they put out a fair amount of heat. So,
I'd assume that inadequate cooling (say by being insulated by dog/cat hair) 
could kill them.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd