Bartman's Blob

If you are like myself who likes to see their music move to an audio visual indicator like a VU meter, you should check out the following software. I have been using the these software for quite some time now and it’s always interesting to see some like of visual audio activities while the music is playing. These audio VU meter have been tested to run on Windows 2008 R2 which is the OS that I am currently using. All the Creative USB Sound Blaster sound card that I have is able to work with the 5 audio VU meter software that is listed below. The sound cards are: Sound Blaster E1, Sound Blaster Play, Sound Blaster Digital Music Premium HD, Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 and a cheap C-media chip-set USB sound card. The 5 free audio VU meter software in no particular order are:   1.  Audio Level Meters  by Paul Marshall ( http://www.darkwooddesigns.co.uk/pc2/meters.html ) Available in both Digital and Analog style meter and in a variety of designs to ...

The sudden implementation of Focused/Other Inbox feature in Outlook.com has caused a lot of confusion for me. I did not realized that a change has taken place unit I noticed that my Inbox is showing that there is unread emails when in fact I had already cleared all my email in the “Inbox”. Soooo, confusing. I tried searching the Settings to try to look for the “switch” so that I can disable this annoying feature, but I could not find it. Time to do some research online and figure out how I can have it disabled. Finally, I’ve found it. If you are seeking to do the same, here’s the solution (as of 18 Nov 2016). Step 1 – Goto Settings and click on “Display settings”. Step 2 – Click on “Focused Inbox” followed by checking “Don’t sort messages” ( you should be able to see the Inbox switched back to normal instantaneously) and finally click on OK. That’s it. Your Inbox will be restored back to normal like so: Hope this can help someone ...

I have been using this Aiwa headphone for years. It’s cheap and good and it pairs very well with the Creative Sound Blaster USB sound cards that I have. When I checked the receipt that i had for this headphone, it was dated 2003 (and today it’s 2016). It’s been a long time since then. Recently, the pair that I have been using started to fail on the left side. I found out that the wire in the cord near the left driver is suffering from an intermittent open circuit. Manage to pry open the casing, snip off the defected section and soldered and wires back. Finally, it’s back to in action again. Due to the incident, I decide to look around to see if anyone is still selling this headphone (HP-M16 brand new). I did find a few sellers but they have already sold out on the headphones(a similar model HP-M38) a few years ago. I tried to look for the specs of HP-M16 and HP-M38 to see if they are the same, but I just couldn’t find them on the internet. So……. I dig through a ...

Using the Creative Sound Blaster E1 (USB Sound card) on a Windows server 2012 r2 server. Sound Blaster E1 Portable Headphone Amplifier The Sound Blaster E1 is both a portable headphone amplifier and a USB sound card contained in one small handy device. If you are thinking of getting the sound blaster E1 or you already have a sound blaster E1 and are thinking of getting another USB sound card for server, read on…… I have done a post on this same Sound Blaster E1 USB sound card running on Windows Server 2008 R2 in the past (you can check it out here: http://bartman88.blogspot.com/2014/09/sound-blaster-e1-sb1600-usb-hd-audio.html ) In this post, I am going to see if it will work on the Windows Server 2012 R2 OS. Here we go: Remember to switch ON the E1 for it to work as a USB sound card. Upon inserting the USB cable into the E1, the OS will detect the device and it will start installing the generic drivers for it. It you are quick enough, you shoul...

Creative Sound Blaster Play USB sound card does not officially support running on Windows Server 2012 R2 or any other windows server OS. Will this work? Let’s give it a try and find out if it will run. In this test, a server box installed with Windows Server 2012 R2 is used. It’s a HP Proliant DL380Gen8. Once the SB Play is inserted into the USB port, the default stock driver will automatically be installed. From the device manager, we can see that the device is detected and the generic driver is installed. Here is the detail of the installed generic USB audio driver. Next, downloaded the driver/software file from the Creative support page. The file downloaded is a windows 8 driver/software file. The filename is “SBPY_PCDRV_LB_1_02_0003a.exe”. You can download it here . During the installation process, you will be prompted with this message, just click on “Install”. Installation is complete. Reboot the server so that the newly insta...

After upgrading the Windows 7 Pro 32 bit on the Pro x2 to Windows 10, I noticed that the upgraded Windows 10 did not get upgraded to the 64 Bit version. Since the Pro x2 is a 64 bit, I decided to perform a clean install of Windows 10  so that I can have it changed to the 64 bit version. I downloaded the Microsoft Windows 10 media creation tool (you can get it here ) , ran the tool, make sure I select "Windows 10" 64 bit and created the USB bootable installation media (details on how to go about doing this can be found here ). Next step, plug in the USB key into the Pro x2 and make sure to select to boot to USB flash drive at the BIOS screen. The installation process was going on smoothly until I got to the section for selecting the installation hard disk partition.  Any suitable sized partition that I have selected to install Windows on was met with a "We couldn't create a new partition or locate an existing one. For more information, see the Setup ...

The Creative Sound Blaster Digital Music Premium HD USB Audiophile sound card might be the one for you. Managed to loan(from my colleague) a Creative Sound Blaster Digital Music Premium HD USB sound card to test whether it will work on Windows Server 2012 R2 OS.  There are no official support for Windows Server OS for this particular USB sound card on Creative's website. That’s the reason for this test to try to see if it will work. In this test, the USB sound card will be plugged into a HP ProLiant DL380Gen8 2U server running Windows Server 2012 R2 OS. As I did not have the driver installation CD with me, I went ahead and downloaded the driver that is meant for Windows 8. The filename of the driver is “XUHD_PCDRV_L11_1_02_0021a.exe”. You can download the driver here . As usual with all the Creative USB Sound card that I have tested so far, the moment I plug it into the USB port, the OS will start installing the generic USB sound card driver for the device. If y...