Dev experience - Soundcards

Chris Burrows

Delphi Developer

Re: My Vista/Delphi/Dev experience - Soundcards

2007-02-09 11:58:22 AM
delphi281
"Kostya" <XXXX@XXXXX.COM>writes

Quote

10. Took a while to get drivers for my onboard card
working. Ok I got the sound but Vista disabled
so called "What U Hear" recording line, so my
visualizer can't grab sound from the card.
Nice eh? I guess someone is really into DRM stuff.
Just for fun downloaded few other visualizers
and they all refused to capture sound. Mind you
on Windows 2003 Server mine and theirs worked flawlessly.
Got Soundblaster and that one let me capture sound.
Ok, half crippled but it workes
Check that you have the manufacturer's own Vista-specific drivers for your

sound device. There are some delays - e.g. the last time I looked a week or
so ago the Creative SoundBlaster drivers were still beta and incomplete.
The Core Audio System has been rewritten from the ground up so you can
expect some surprises:
<quote>
The first (and biggest) change we made was to move the entire audio stack
out of the kernel and into user mode. Pre-Vista, the audio stack lived in a
bunch of different kernel mode device drivers, including sysaudio.sys,
kmixer.sys, wdmaud.sys, redbook.sys, etc. In Vista and beyond, the only
kernel mode drivers for audio are the actual audio drivers (and portcls.sys,
the high level audio port driver).
The second major change we made was a totally revamped UI for audio.
Sndvol32 and mmsys.cpl were completely rewritten (from scratch) to include
new, higher quality visuals, and to focus on the common tasks that users
actually need to do. All the old functionality is still there, but for the
most part, it is been buried deep below the UI.
</quote>
For more details see: What's up with Audio in Windows Vista?
blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2005/09/19/471346.aspx
There's a video on the subject at:
channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx

Kostya

Delphi Developer

2007-02-09 12:09:25 PM

Re: My Vista/Delphi/Dev experience - Soundcards

Yeah, I know all that stuff about revamping
audio architecture. Developers love to explain
why the stuff does not work. I am treating it
from a pure user point of view. I do not
care why. Without giving any advantages in
audio area they broke whole bunch of stuff
that used to work just fine. I do not
appreciate engineering for the sake of it.
Show me the benefits and then we can talk.
Right now I have nothing but troubles.

Quote

--
Chris Burrows
CFB Software
www.cfbsoftware.com

Daniël Mantione

Delphi Developer

2007-02-09 03:37:27 PM

Re: My Vista/Delphi/Dev experience - Soundcards

Kostya <XXXX@XXXXX.COM>writes:

Quote

Without giving any advantages in
audio area they broke whole bunch of stuff
that used to work just fine.
Yeah. And they gave disadvantages: audio can no longer be hardware accelerated. Gone is wavetable, positional audio, eax, and so on.

Daniël Mantione

Oliver Townshend

Delphi Developer

2007-02-09 06:33:18 PM

Re: My Vista/Delphi/Dev experience - Soundcards

Quote

Yeah, I know all that stuff about revamping
audio architecture. Developers love to explain
why the stuff does not work. I am treating it
from a pure user point of view. I do not
care why. Without giving any advantages in
audio area they broke whole bunch of stuff
that used to work just fine. I do not
appreciate engineering for the sake of it.
Show me the benefits and then we can talk.
Right now I have nothing but troubles.
Moore's law says that it will be a different story in 18 months.

By August 2008, you will be running Vista.
Oliver Townshend

Kostya

Delphi Developer

2007-02-09 08:48:28 PM

Re: My Vista/Delphi/Dev experience - Soundcards

Quote

By August 2008, you will be running Vista.
For testing purposes yes.

For day to day work - not likely.

Nathanial Woolls

Delphi Developer

2007-02-09 10:38:13 PM

Re: My Vista/Delphi/Dev experience - Soundcards

"Kostya" <XXXX@XXXXX.COM>writes

Quote

Show me the benefits and then we can talk.
Right now I have nothing but troubles.
There are many benefits to the new audio stack. I have shown you places where

you can read about it, or you could check out the audio options in Vista to
see for yourself. But I am sure you'd just say you don't need it or you have
something that already does that, so really what's the point. What would
*your* Vista have been, since MS apparently got *nothing* right.