Windows Drivers for the Pro AudioSpectrum 16 Version 1.2 copyright 1991,1992, MEDIA VISION (510) 770-8600 Thankyou for purchasing the Pro AudioSpectrum Plus or Pro AudioSpectrum 16! We think you're going to love your new card. This release (5/5/92) includes new Windows drivers for the Pro AudioSpectrum family of audio adaptors. These drivers require Windows 3.1 and will not work with Windows 3.0 with Multimedia Extenstions. Since Windows 3.1 now contains most of the features of Multimedia Windows, we will assume that most of you will be upgrading to Windows 3.1. Media Vision will continue to improve and enhance the Windows drivers in order to continue to be the best source of Multimedia Windows products for your PC. The new Pro AudioSpectrum cards are capable of so much, we will probably be adding features to the drivers for another year. We will be working on supporting multiple Pro AudioSpectra in a single system. (Pro AudioSpectra is the plural form instead of the awkward form 'Pro AudioSpectrums') Those of you that have upgraded from the original Pro AudioSpectrum, don't sell your old one just yet. With two Pro AudioSpectra you might want to record on one while playing back from the other. Supporting multiple cards in the system requires new ways of handling multiple mixers, synthesizers, etc. When we sort all this out, you can expect new drivers. If you want to stay current with what's happening in the world of multimedia, windows, and the Pro AudioSpectrum 16, subscribe to CompuServe. Once online type GO MEDIAVISION. This will take you to the Media Vision section of the Multimedia Vendor forum. Each day, Monday thru Friday, a Media Vision representative will stop by to answer your questions. We also hope to establish a presence on Internet, BIX, America Online and Prodigy. Look for our representatives on those services. Be sure to check the NEWS section toward the end of this file. IMPORTANT: THE SND BLASTER SECTION OF THE PRO AUDIOSPECTRUM 16 IS, BY DEFAULT, SET TO IRQ 7, DMA 1, PORT 220. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CONFIGURE THE PROAUDIOSPECTRUM TO THE SAME IRQ OR DMA CHANNEL AS THE SND BLASTER. IF YOU DO, THE SYMPTOM WILL BE A SHORT SECTION OF AUDIO PLAYED OVER AND OVER AND NOT STOPPING. SHOULD YOU HEAR UNENDING SHORT LOOPS OF SOUND , CHECK FOR IRQ CONFLICTS. Here is a description of the files on this disk: OEMSETUP.INF This file allows you to add drivers to Windows using the drivers applet in the control panel. If you use the drivers applet, you will not have to manually edit your system.ini file. Using the Install disk will, in most cases be preferable to installing drivers via the drivers applet. MIX.EXE This program allows you to modify those mixing controls that you'll want to change most often. Its main difference from promix is that it doesn't cover nearly as much screen area. This program can be added to your \windows directory. PROMIX.EXE ProMix can be launced from the WIN.INI 'load' line. If you have Windows 3.1, use the Program Manager's File/Preferences menu item to select the open minimized option. This program can be added to your \windows directory. Here's a nifty feature: When running Windows, you can use the CTRL-ALT-U, CTRL-ALT-D, and CTRL-ALT-M sequences to adjust the master volume. The system menu contains a new feature: a pair of DB meters. The DB meters are active only during record and playback of waveform data. Owners of the original Pro AudioSpectrum may be surprised to see two new sliders on the PROMIXER. The BLSTR channel controls the Snd Blaster-compatible digital audio source. The new slider on the far right is a master record level that lets you adjust the total volume of all sources routed to the record mixer. MMMIXER.DLL This DLL must be in your \WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory. MMMIXER.DLL is like MMSYSTEM.DLL in a couple of ways. First, it provides a driver-independent layer for all mixer API's. Second, it loads any mixer device drivers in the system. If you build an application that makes use of our mixer API's, this DLL handles the call. If there are no mixer device drivers in the system, the mixer API's will simply return an error. This means you can utilize the Pro AudioSpectrum 16's mixer capabilities without requiring the user to have our hardware. No changes this release. The mixer DLL has two BIG selling points: 1) Interrupt-driven timed volume fades If you're a programmer, investigate the mixSetState function as defined in the MIXSPEC directory. 2) Startup volume initialization The first time the MIXER driver is loaded it reads WIN.INI for volume setting and patch information. When Windows shuts down, the current settings are saved. Here's a sample WIN.INI entry: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////// [mvmixer.drv] LineIn1=SYNTH MUS] PLAY L=100% R=100% @=0000 LineIn2=MIXER MIX] PLAY L= 72% R= 72% @=0000 LineIn3=AUX AUX| PLAY L=100% R=100% @=0000 LineIn4=CD CDA| PLAY L= 0% R= 0% @=0000 LineIn5=MIC MIC| PLAY L= 0% R= 0% @=0000 LineIn6=DIGITAL WAV] RECORD L= 0% R= 0% @=0000 LineIn7=SPKR SPK] PLAY L=100% R=100% @=0000 LineIn7=BLSTR WAV] PLAY L=100% R=100% @=0000 LineOut1=MASTER AMP| PLAY L= 79% R= 79% @=0000 LineOut2=RECORD WAV| PLAY L=100% R=200% @=0000 StereoEnhance=ON Loudness=ON Bass=50 Treble=78 SaveSettingsOnWindowsExit=YES LINE FIELD: There are 7 input Lines and 1 output line. Note: the Pro AudioSpectrum 16 has a second output line. PATCH NAME: The field immediately after the '=' is the patch name. These names (ie. SYNTH) appear in promix.exe at the bottom of each slider pair. DEVICE TYPE The next field is the device type field. The device type determines the type of icon displayed in MIX.EXE Each device type has a standard 3-letter mnemonic name that can be obtained by calling mixGetDeviceName. The current list of types is: N/C No Connection SPK PC speaker CDA Compact Disk Player AAT Analog Audio Tape AUX Auxillary DAT Digital Audio Tape MIC Microphone TEL Telephone VTR Video Tape Recorder MIX Mixer VDP Video Disc Player EQU Equalizer MUS Musical Instrument AMP Amplifier WAV Digital Waveform Player LPA Phonograph Audio RAD Radio TVA Television Audio UNK Unknown Device Type The fourth character indicates whether the user is responsible for making the physical device connection. Think of the character as the mounting bracket of an audio card. A hole, the '|' character, represents a mini phone jack. If the fourth character is ']', the connection is made by the driver. The '|' character indicates a jack or connector must be hooked up before audio can be heard. User-friendly applications may use this information to remind the user to connect a particular device. OUTPUT CONNECTION The next field corresponds to the internal mixer connection info. The word PLAY indicates that input is routed to the PLAY output (LineOut1). RECORD means the input is routed to the ADC circuitry. VOLUMES If it isn't obvious, the L= and R= fields specify the volumes of the left and right channels at start-up. ASSOCIATION This field is used to save information that specifies a relationship between a mixer input and some other device in the system. For example, if there are two CD's in the system and one is connected to LineIn4 and the other is connected to LineIn3, the dwAssociation can be used to determine which MCI CD device is on which input. MISC The other lines are self explanatory. In the future we will let users change the settings through control panel's driver setup. CHANGING WIN.INI As an example, if you connect your Walkman to LineIn3 (AUX), you can replace the word AUX with RADIO. Then, change the device type field to RAD| ///////////////////////////////////////////////////// This DLL was developed to provide MultiMedia developers better control over audio mixing functionality than is afforded by the current volume API's. Every attempt was made in the API design to avoid its being biased toward any specific mixer hardware. Furthermore, the driver design is modeled after Microsoft's Multimedia Windows driver design in order to facilitate its acceptance. We are offering this DLL to Microsoft and the MPC community as a proposed standard for Multimedia Windows volume control. There is no license required to use MMMIXER.DLL and you may freely distribute it with your products. Hardware manufacturers are encouraged to develop there own drivers to work with MMMIXER.DLL. Media Vision does not yet offer a DDK for mixer drivers. Parties interested in the source to mvmixer.drv should contact Media Vision's Jim Gifford at (415) 770-8600. See the MIXSPEC directory for detailed information on the Multimedia Mixer API. MVMIXER.DRV This file belongs in your \WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory. This is Media Vision's Mixer driver for the Pro AudioSpectrum family of products. In the [drivers] section of your system.ini file, you must have the line: mixer=mvmixer.drv MCIMIXER.DRV Put this file in your \WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory. This driver provides a set of extended MCI commands for accessing mixer capabiities. Under the [mci] section of your system.ini file, you must have the line: mixer=mcimixer.drv Developers may ship this driver, license free, with their products. See the MIXSPEC directory for detailed information on the Multimedia Mixer MCI command set (MCIMIXER.DOC). MVPROAUD.DRV This file belongs in your \WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory. This driver supports WAVE (digital sound) audio, MIDI I/O and auxillary volume control. In the [drivers] section of your system.ini file, you should have the following three entries: wave=mvproaud.drv midi=mvproaud.drv aux=mvproaud.drv This driver keeps configuration information in your system.ini file under the header [mvproaud.drv] If it fails to find that entry, it will check to see if MVSOUND.SYS is loaded and use it's settings. Failing that, it will look for the outmoded [mvwave.drv] and [mvmidi.drv] entries. As a last resort, the driver will default to IRQ=7 and DMA=1. When our aux driver is the only one in the drivers section, a call to auxGetNumDevs returns a value indicating 4 aux devices are in the system: Device 0 is internal CD-ROM volume Device 1 is auxillary (line in) volume Device 2 is microphone volume Device 3 is master volume While we provide a Multimedia Mixer library, we still support the existing volume control calls, auxGetVolume and auxSetVolume, when this driver is installed. In the [drivers] section of your system.ini file, you must add the line: aux=mvaux.drv VPASD.386 This file belongs in your \WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory. It provides extra buffer space needed to handle 16-bit digital audio. You must have the following line in system.ini's [386Enh] section: device=vpasd.386 Also you must add the following line to system.ini's [mvproaud.drv] section: buffer=32 TBWAVE.DRV This is the .WAV driver for Media Vision's Snd Blaster-compatible ThunderBoard product. It can be added to your system.ini file giving you a second digital audio device: wave1=tbwave.drv This driver is not automatically installed. Many low-end PC's may not be able to accomodate two digital audio channels playing simultaneously. CPU speed, hard disk speed and available RAM will determine whether your system can handle dual DACs and at what sampling rates. VTBD.386 Put this file in the \WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory if you will be using tbwave.drv You must have the following line in system.ini's [386Enh] section: device=vtbd.386 VADMAD.386 Put this file in the \WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory. This file is not required for Windows 3.1. VADMAD stands for "virtual audio DMA device". If you run Windows in 386 enhanced mode, you must add device=vadmad.386 to the [386Enh] section of system.ini. This device driver allows our wave driver to use auto-initialized DMA mode. When this file is not present, you will hear a PC-speaker beep as Windows boots and you will not be able to play any digital audio sounds. MCIMIXER.DOC These two files describe Media Vision's proposed MIXAPI.DOC standard for software controlled mixer devices. _____________________________________________________________________ SAMPLE SYSTEM.INI FILE DRIVERS SECTION [drivers] timer=timer.drv Wave=mvproaud.drv Wave1=tbwave.drv MIDI=mvproaud.drv MIDI1=opl3.drv mixer=mvmixer.drv Aux=mvproaud.drv [mci] CDAudio=mcicda.drv ** WaveAudio=mciwave.drv 4 Sequencer=mciseq.drv mixer=mcimixer.drv ** Windows 3.1 owners. The mcicda.drv can be installed if you have a MPC-compatible CD-ROM drive. This driver will allow you to control your CD through MCI programs like MPLAYER. MCICDA.DRV can be found on one of your Microsoft Windows installation diskettes. The file may be compressed. If so, it will have an underscore as the last character. You can decompress it using the expand utility, and type EXPAND mcicda.dr_ c:\windows\system\mcicda.drv. _____________________________________________________________________ MEDIA VISION NEWS: Media Vision will shortly announce two new audio adaptors: The Pro AudioSpectrum Plus with Sony interface AND The Pro AudioSpectrum 16 with Sony interface This means that owners of Sony's Laser Library or other CD-ROM drive's that use the Sony bus will be able to upgrade their system to an MPC by getting one of the above cards. Installation Notes ------------------ The sub-mini jacks at the back of the board are: Top: External Input Middle: Amplified Output Bottom: Microphone input (MONO) The four pin header connector is for the PC-speaker input. The five pin header connector is for the CD-Audio internal input. There is a second five pin header in the center of the Pro-16. This header is for a second internal CD input. That input will be supported in the next software release. That input will take over the so-called "record monitor" input which appears as the second channel from the left on the Pro Mixer (PROMIX.EXE) If you have bugs to report, technical questions or feature requests regarding this software, please contact Media Vision Technical Support: Tech Support Voice: (800) 638-2807 or (510) 770-9905 Tech support's FAX: (510) 770-9592. BBS: (510) 770-0968 2400b 8n1 BBS: (510) 770-1661 2400b 8n1 BBS: (510) 770-0527 9600b 8n1 We will shortly be adding more BBS lines and more tech support lines.