The Death of an Audio Card

The death of an audio card was like this: first it lagged the whole machine just a little, if lag can be a transitive verb, then it started eating up half the CPU time, lagging the computer a LOT. Yesterday, my Aardvark audio card got its tongue stuck in its last ant hole and couldn't get it out-- no MIDI, no audio, nothin'. I went online to see what was happening at aardvark.com and discovered that the company has disappeared. I googled a bit to pick up any traces of advice on what I might do, but all I could find was a sad little petition dated a couple of years ago asking Aardvark to release the sourcecode for the cards, presumably so that people could make them work properly. Sigh. Of course this happens right in the middle of a project, so I'm using the old fashioned method of writing, playing at the piano, and guessing what it will sound like. In addition, I think that everything, including video, runs off the clock in the card, and so this is why nothing synchronizes anymore-- the video plays in high speed. Ah well, a temporary setback-- the new card is already on the way. I hope it doesn't have any trouble in my aging computer.

A last note-- I will stay away from name brands I don't recognize. Aardvark was a small company making a very nice product and so I bought it, BUT I had my first warning when it took forever for them to come up with a driver to work with the then-new Windows XP. The person handling my phone call when I was grumbling about the non-compatibility with XP was very unprofessional. I should have returned the card right then. Now I know two symptoms of a company at high risk for evaporating-- small staff and volatile support techs.