SoundMixerEx

[topix]

No, i used 'Change sound switch' (on different sound controls).

Is there a debug-mode i can use to produce a log-file which could give more information to help you?

[dexter98]

The master volume fader is only visible if you select the 'Use sound fader/slider' action.

However, it's most likely not possible to control the full mixer through the legacy API in Vista. I'll look into it, but I first have to install Vista here somewhere, otherwise it will be a bit difficult to test is...

For now, use the 'old' Sound control plugin for the master volume control.

[topix]

yes, i still use the standard sound control, but it would have been nice to have more control


P.S.: How about VirtualPC for testing it on Vista?
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... c0b40a73b6
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... layLang=en

[dexter98]

Thanks for the suggestion. However, I also could use duo-boot. The problem is that I don't have enough HDD space to install Vista and I doubt if my system is fast enough to run it anyway...

[confirmator]

Hi,

Great plugin! Works fine on Vista x64 SP1 when starting EG in XP compatibility mode.

[dexter98]

Great! Good to hear.... Thanks!

[gibler]

Great plugin I must say!

But I miss one function and that is to enable/disable the DTS Interactive on my soundcard.
I have a Realtek ALC889A, I would be delighted if there is anyone out there with program skill who could fix this.

Here's a screen of the Realtek HD Audio Manager with the DTS Interactive button highlighted

Thank you!

[dexter98]

Only the controls that are exposed in the 'normal' sound mixer under Windows are available. It could be that the controls you want to control are vendor specific and use a non-standard API. Then it is not possible to control these controls in anyway.

[Livin]

Dexter,
Is there a way to direct a specific audio stream (from an audio player: WinAmp, foobar, etc) to a specific channel?

I'd like to set up multiple players, each tied to a specific channel so I can create a multi-zone audio control.

thx

[dexter98]

If you give more info (OS, soundcard etc etc) I can take a look at it...

[Livin]

I'd like to be able to direct multiple an audio sources (WinAmp, foobar, etc), each "assigned" to a single or set of output channel(s) using a built-in sound card and/or add-in sound cards (like Creative Labs, etc). So if you have a 7.1 built-in sound card you essentially have 8 mono zones, or 4 stereo zones.

Other apps have this but are far more than I need and I already use EG so it makes sense to do it with EG...
Pay apps: J River, Girder
Free apps: xlobby2, ehomecreations (http://www.ehomecreations.com/eHomeHelp ... iZones.htm)

If you can tackle this one I'm sure others would appreciate it also!

[dexter98]

Hmmm, I understand your feature request, but I don't think this has anything to do with the SoundMixerEx plugin. I think you should post your question to the feature request pages on this forum.

I have looked into the products you mentioned, but I couldn't find the exact features you mention in these products. xlobby for instance seems to support multiroom audio, but actually controls an external hardware audio-router system (Russound).

I don't think it is possible to use the multiple channels of a multi-channel sound card as seperate sound cards. All the solutions I've ever seen use multiple soundcards. I also don't think it is possible anyway, since multi-channel audio has to be sent to the windows audio subsystem as a single stream. Enabling such a feature would involve low-level windows hacking...

In the pre-vista soundmixer architecture, it is also not directly possible to redirect a certain audio stream to a certain sound card if the software generating the sound doesn't allow to set the sound output device. Again, such a feature would involve low-level windows hacking...

[Livin]

Hi Dexter,
I was going off of a response to my original thread (http://www.eventghost.org/forum/viewtop ... f=2&t=1031) where CollinR said your plugin would handle this.

To answer your comments...

with XP (not sure about vista) what I'm asking for is 100% possible and is being done with all the software I mentioned.

J. River Media Center and xLobby support multi-zone audio by channel assignment on the soundcard (no need for multiple sound cards) - no external hardware required.
... cool skin for xLobby to control multizone: http://www.xlobby.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=5917

Another I did not mention is kX Project (kxproject.lugosoft.com)... WDM drivers that allow this for specific sound cards - Creative, E-MU,
- these act as an ASIO wrapper for WMD, so it's designed to work on top of your existing drivers

The chipset on my mobo (and most being made at this point) is... ADI AD1988B (or a variation of)
specs:
8-Channel CODEC
Supports: Jack-Sensing, Enumeration, Jack-Retasking
Multi-Streaming : technology that simultaneously sends different audio streams to different destinations
Optical and Coaxial S/PDIF Out interfaces
Support DTS Connect Function
-- ZIP wth PDF of technical specs attached to thread.

I figured that the multi-streaming would be a feature that you could take advantage of with your plug-in if it did not already?

Even if we needed separate sound cards per zone, USB sound cards are cheap.

Let me know if you think you can add the needed functionality... I bet a lot of people would use it! Just wait until you see the reaction on AVS Forum once it was posted.

[dexter98]

Hi Dexter,
with XP (not sure about vista) what I'm asking for is 100% possible and is being done with all the software I mentioned.

J. River Media Center and xLobby support multi-zone audio by channel assignment on the soundcard (no need for multiple sound cards) - no external hardware required.
... cool skin for xLobby to control multizone: http://www.xlobby.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=5917

Another I did not mention is kX Project (kxproject.lugosoft.com)... WDM drivers that allow this for specific sound cards - Creative, E-MU,
- these act as an ASIO wrapper for WMD, so it's designed to work on top of your existing drivers

I'm also very interested in such functionality, but I don't see how to program such a complicated thing. I understand that the job seems to be very simple from a user point-of-view, but from a programming point-of-view it is way more difficult. And it is completely different from my plugin. I'll try to explain why it is completely different and way more difficult to program:

My plugin is ONLY able to control the controls available in the builtin Soundmixer under Windows. These controls can be controlled from other applications through a standard well-defined API (interface). No magic over here. Just calling the correct functions and we're done. This is exactly what the SoundMixerEx plugin does.


What you suggest is something completely different (for as far as I understand you correctly).

If the audio of only the controlling application has to be redistributed (like in xlobby for as far as I can makeup from the limited documentation), it is indeed relatively simple to perform such a task since we can generate any multi-channel audio stream we want. However, since you already stated you want to redirect the sound of other applications as well, it becomes way more difficult. There are two possibilities here:

1) Use a special driver such as the kX Project, which exposes each stereo pair of channels as a seperate sound card, and force each application to use one of these sound cards (outputs). However, this is not a generic solution at all since it is very hardware-specific. Our application needs to force selected applications to use different sound cards. But I haven't found a way to force applications from another application to do this. Also, not all applications allows the user to select a sound output device and all sound will be sent to the default output device.

2) Another possibility is to capture/redirect the audio signal from these applications to our application. Once the signal is captured by our application we can build a new multi-channel stream from the seperate streams. This is probably the prefered way to do this. However, for as far as I know, no standard API exists and a good part of Windows hacking and low-level programming is needed. I've searched for such tricks, but couldn't find any source code on this. Also building a multi-channel stream from seperate streams is quite difficult, since sample-rate conversion and mixing may be needed. It is almost reconstructing the windows low-level sound architecture from scratch.

The chipset on my mobo (and most being made at this point) is... ADI AD1988B (or a variation of)
specs:
8-Channel CODEC
Supports: Jack-Sensing, Enumeration, Jack-Retasking
Multi-Streaming : technology that simultaneously sends different audio streams to different destinations
Optical and Coaxial S/PDIF Out interfaces
Support DTS Connect Function
-- ZIP wth PDF of technical specs attached to thread.
I figured that the multi-streaming would be a feature that you could take advantage of with your plug-in if it did not already?

The hardware is most of the times not the problem. It will be indeed powerfull enough to perform such a task. However, the problem lies in the driver part. If the driver would have exposed each channel or stereo pair of channels as a seperate sound card (like in the kx project), it wouldn't be a problem. But this is likely not the case for your soundcard. It is only seen as one multi-channel sound card and stereo signals are redirect to the front channels by default by the windows sound architecture.

[Livin]

I installed ASIO4ALL, a wrapper that allows more control over existing drivers.

I have installed it and now trying J.River Media Center (JRMC) but have not got it working yet... audio is not routing properly yet.

If I can get it working I will likely use JRMC for multi-zone until XBMC gets multi-zone control.

thx for the correspondence.