Thanks Frank. The controls are showing up correctly and are functional under
Device Properties as you described.
My main concern is that our products are targeted at the professional audio
market, and many of our customers will be using our cards with broadcast
automation and mixing desk software that expects to find these controls
through the mixer API, and the loss of this functionality will seriously
impact on our business.
Jeff
Thanks for the clarification. So you are concerned with output mixing rather than input gain control. Larry's response is more correct than mine, then.
These controls, if represented properly in the hardware driver, should appear in Vista's mmsys.cpl. If you right-click on the icon that represents the output, select Properties, and then click on the Levels tab, the controls should show up here. I realize this is probably not how you want your customer to access these controls, but this would be a test of whether the controls are properly represented in your driver.
Larry is correct that a custom app would have to access these controls through an interface called IDeviceTopology. We expect very few applications to have a need for this, though.
Frank Yerrace Microsoft Corporation
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
-----Original Message----- From: wdmaudiodev-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:wdmaudiodev-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jeff Pages Sent: Friday, March 10, 2006 12:11 PM To: wdmaudiodev@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [wdmaudiodev] Re: Mixer API under Vista build 5308
Frank,
Thanks for your response. The faders and mutes I'm referring to are part of the output mixer - they allow the input lines to be mixed in with the output being generated by the wave output stream. Just about every sound card I've seen has a "Line In" fader on its output mixer, by the way, so we're not the only ones doing this. In a broadcasting application that comes to mind (and these are written by third parties, not us), the line input connects to a satellite downlink while the wave output stream is used to insert commercials and station identification jingles.
A similar application would be a simple "mixing desk" program using the line inputs of a multichannel card as the inputs to the desk. Here it's desirable to be able to monitor the inputs while queuing audio sources, and also to be able to mix multiple line inputs to a single wave input endpoint (which I understand from earlier e-mails is also no longer possible under Vista).
Such applications are commonly used by low-budget community stations as an alternative to a physical mixing desk.
Jeff
----- Original Message ----- From: <wdmaudiodev-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <wdmaudiodev@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, March 11, 2006 5:57 AM
Subject: [wdmaudiodev] Re: Mixer API under Vista build 5308
controlJeff, if I understand your scenario correctly, you are referring to *inputs* rather than outputs, and wish to have some applicationsothe input gain/mute. I believe Larry was thinking more about output scenarios in his response. By the way, I'm curious what form the application takes. Is it a specialized app for this customer scenario? Is it a self-contained control panel that ships with your hardware?
If my understanding is correct, then there are two points to make regarding Vista:
1. We hope that your driver and internal driver topology is designedthat each separate input appears as a separate audio input device totheobserveOS. These are what we call "endpoints." Endpoints are programmatically accessed through a new mmdevice API. A simple test of this is towhether Vista's audio control panel displays a separate icon for eachofthroughthe inputs.
2. The volume (a.k.a. gain, fader) of an input can be controlledtoa simple interface directly activated on the mmdevice endpoint that represents a particular input.
If this seems like the right guidance, we can provide the programming details to you (specific interface names, etc.)
Frank Yerrace Microsoft Corporation
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
-----Original Message----- From: wdmaudiodev-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:wdmaudiodev-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Larry Osterman Sent: Friday, March 10, 2006 9:48 AM To: 'wdmaudiodev@xxxxxxxxxxxxx' Subject: [wdmaudiodev] Re: Mixer API under Vista build 5308
For Vista, the MME Mixer APIs are virtualized; you do not have accessnotthe hardware audio controls.
Our analysis of audio applications indicated that the vast majority of audio applications were using the mixer APIs for volume control andSoto access the actual audio topology (although we recognized that there was a set of control panel extensions that needed to access the actual topology). However, when these applications accessed the hardware controls, they messed up audio for all the other apps on the system.accesswe made a decision that for the benefit of the majority of the apps rendering audio on Vista, we'd present a minimal mixer topology that provided only the controls that an application would need.
Unfortunately, it appears that your control panel plugin requiressolutionto the hardware, we do have replacement for the mixer APIs that allows an application to directly access the audio hardware. If you use the IDeviceTopology API interface, you can directly examine the topology offered by your audio solution and access the controls on thatindirectly.
The headers for these new APIs may not yet be available, but they will be available in a Vista SDK update soon(ish) :(
Larry Osterman
-----Original Message----- From: wdmaudiodev-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:wdmaudiodev-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jeff Pages Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2006 6:53 PM To: wdmaudiodev@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [wdmaudiodev] Mixer API under Vista build 5308
Our sound cards have an output mux node with faders and mutes for monitoring the input lines. A number of our clients in the radio broadcasting industry use these monitor faders under software controlandorder to mix live audio with software-generated audio such as wave files. I've noticed under Vista build 5308 that these monitor fadersmailto:wdmaudiodev-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=subscribemutes are not appearing in the mixer API, and furthermore calling mixerGetControlDetails and mixerSetControlDetails on the controls that do appear is not passing any calls down to the driver's topology port get/set property handlers.
Is there any way under Vista that these topology nodes can be accessed programmatically from the mixer API (or elsewhere)?
Jeff Pages Innes Corporation Pty Ltd ******************
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