Hi

I'm still a happy owner of the HSDP 9632 PCI card i have purchased at least 3 or 4 years ago, and i have been using it as my primary sound card all the time and for everything.

Except that in the past 2-3 months, i started noticing an unusual sound quality anomaly in all sound playback that became more and more noticeable, so i decided to write about this matter in here and hear
advice/opinions from RME people.

First of all, im always using latest versions of sound drivers, and my current system is based on win7 64bit (i have already upgraded twice my pc config, still keeping the same sound card though)

The particular anomaly i start to notice occurs when playing music/audio or just working in Cubase, this anomaly is clipping / saturation in sound playback that hasn't been here before and when playing the same tracks i have mixed/mastered earlier having crystal clear and rich sound using the same sound card. I have been paying attention by using the moderate levels everywhere in the Hammerfall DSP mixer.  The clipping and saturation occurs when either using XLR L/R output on speakers or directly connected to headphones output, and i must mention that i have tried different headphones and also tried different speakers setup, and the result is still the same.

I feel this very intriguing, since this anomaly reached a state of providing "false" and missleading clipping / saturation sound on nearly every instrument in Cubase and/or when just playingback almost any type of music tracks (including original CDs of popular music bands) and, from what i understand this occurs strictly physically at the backend audio output and NOT internally inside the pc (cliping levels etc)

So, i was just wondering if after certain time of use, the internal builtin pre amp components on the HSDP 9632 may wear off and end up by dying after some time, is that possible?

thanks for clearing this up

regards,
Tsol