🚀 go-pugleaf

I have sadly found that a lot of the creative product does not work well at
all under 2000 and XP.  It almost certainly has to be a driver issue as the
exact same card will work flawlessly under 98.  I believe that the SB512 and
the CT4760 are basically internally the same thing and use the same driver
code base, hence the same problem.

Some of the OEM hardware appears to slightly different enough to execute
different driver code however, OEM versions from Compaq and Dell are much
less problematic that the retail versions.

I would currently avoid the creative products like the plague until they get
their act together, as a previous creative fan I find this very sad.

The Turtle Beach card still seems to be a reasonable offering as does the
Phillips and Hercules.


"E" <ruess@speakeasy.net> wrote in message
news:Yb-cnVQjYI8eCrCjXTWcqg@speakeasy.net...
> This is a bit of a long one.  Basically, with some sound cards & their
> respective drivers (in Win2k), the cursor positions in my DirectSound app
go
> nuts and don't work right, but with other cards and drivers, using the
same
> app, it all works fine.  Here's the excruciating details:
>
> I'm building a app in VB6 / DX8 that's going to function as "hands-free"
> medical dictation software.  The user's got a set of footpedals, one for
> playback & one for recording.  User pushes the record pedal, I start
> capturing to a directSound capture buffer @ 11Khz 8bit mono, and when they
> let off the record pedal I dump what they just recorded into a
> secondaryBuffer of the same freq/bit/channel, which they can subsequently
> listen to with the playback pedal.  There's a bit of cursor positioning
> going on & logistics of emulating the behavior of a tape machine, but
those
> details aside, it's a fairly straightforward process - a capture buffer,
and
> a playback buffer.  And the app works ~flawlessly~ on a few of the random
> PCs here around the lab running Win2K... until I installed it on this one:
>
> AMD Duron @ 1100~ish MHz
> Microstar MS-6340 motherboard (ver. 5)
> onboard VIA "AC97"? sound
> 256Megs PC133 RAM
> Win98 se
>
> When running my app, this config crashed & gave me blue screens in an
> entirely inconsistent, yet persistent fashion.  It was deemed to be,
> clearly, "unstable".  We have 2 of these machines, and they both exhibit
> identical behavior with my app.  After checking DX version & dxdiag (which
> were fine), I simply replaced the OS with Win2K, since other PCs ran my
app
> perfectly under 2K, I figured that would be an easy solution =P  Such was
> not the case.
>
> Under Win2k, I no longer have blue-screens or blatant instability, but the
> app just behaves... funny.  I think cursor positioning has gone wacko.  It
> cuts off ends of sentences when user records (unable to determine cause -
> either .lWrite cursor in secondaryBuffer "rolling back" when data is
copied
> into it via the readBuffer method, or, .lWrite cursor rolling back to far
> when the .stop method is invoked on the capture buffer).  Assumed this to
be
> a driver issue with onboard sound device, so disabled onboard sound and
> installed OEM Sound Blaster Live! (model CT4760) & latest Win2K drivers
from
> creative.com.
>
> Behavior becomes increasingly sporadic with the SoundBlaster card.  Unable
> to playback sound (regardless of SetCurrentPosition, the secondaryBuffers
> .lPlay cursor "jumps" to the end of the buffer when .Play is invoked),
> invoking .Start on the ~capture~ buffer also causes the secondaryBuffer
> cursor to move significant distances, generally to the end of the buffer.
A
> sort of buffer mayhem was certainly going on, and turning down HW
> acceleration in multimedia props could calm this down a bit, so that
playing
> and record could at least be achieved in a sensible manner.  However,
> problem with "end of words being cut-off", i.e., .lWrite cursor roll-back,
> either in capture or secondaryBuffer, remained a problem.  Turning HW
> Acceleration completely off slows the app down to unusable speeds, creates
> too much delay when pushing on pedals (however, there appear to be no
cursor
> problems if you're patient enough to play around with it in a lagged
state,
> it "works" fine, it's just very slow to respond to start/stop methods).
>
> SB Live model CT4760 is a tad old, so suspecting semi-aged SB Live card,
> removed CT4760, purchased new SB PCI 512 card (SB0150, I believe) -
> installed latest drivers from creative.com.  Identical results to the
> CT4760.  Sporadic, incorrect buffer cursor behavior with HW acceleration
> turned up, cuts off ends of sentences with it turned down to minimum, and
> works ok yet unusably slow with HW Accel turned off.
>
> Removed SB0150, installed a 3rd card - yet another SB product, this one a
> presumably OEM Live! pulled from a Dell, model CT4780.  Installed latest
> drivers from creative.com and the result?  App works perfectly!  I can
have
> HW Accel set to any position that isn't "off" and all cursor positions in
> buffers are exactly as they should be in my code, and as such, program
works
> just fine.  (This one baffles me!).  In summary, it works just fine with
an
> SB Live CT4780, but is squirrelly with an SB PCI 512, an SB Live CT4760,
or
> the motherboards on-board sound.  Frustrating!
>
> Apparently the OEM SBLive! CT4780 is a specific OEM card for Dell and not
> directly obtainable by consumers, but I would really, really, really like
to
> FIX what is going on, and save having to replace these 2 boxes.  In fact,
I
> feel somewhat helpless that DS methods simply aren't being executed
properly
> by the soundcard... what can I even do about that?
>
> I'm getting very close to replacing 2 workstations simply because I can't
> seem to find a (realistically obtainable) hardware/driver combination that
> works with my DS8 app :\  I really assumed a brand-new SoundBlaster card
> would function properly when given simple DirectSound instructions!  The
> only methods I'm using are .stop, .start, .play, .setcurrentposition and
> .getcurrentposition.  Using HW acceleration, these methods don't work
> properly with 2 out of 3 soundblaster cards I've tried under win2k...
>
> I can't figure this one out...  I can post code, additional system specs,
> etc if anyone's got any ideas.
>
>