It is recommended to test memory with Memtest86+ (it works also on x64).

Well, they are all but one caused by an attempt to access a mapped memory page on an IRQ level too high (IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL).
The dumps are unfortunately a bit inconclusive, so I installed XP Pro x64 today and toyed around with it, and the driver works OK with the exception of MPU401 and the installer.

The driver stores the mixer settings in the registry during shutdown, and there have been some problems in the past - but I think they are resolved by now. Anyhoo, I'll do some further testing.

Thank you Egor. I have just downloaded it, burned CD and booted the system to test the memory. It takes about 22 minut to complete the whole process and a result is PASS. I am happy that it is not a hardware but on the other hand still the CMIx64 problem is not solved.
Maybe a remark about Panda Antivirus 2007 (Final release 2.01) is important as I have been using it so far together with Windows XP Firewall. Anyway if I uninstall CMI driver the problem disappear...
Please let you also know that I have SoundMax x64 driver for a audio chip on my motherboard (Asus board and original asus x64 audio driver) too and it works fine. The only case I have decided to put additional sound card into the PCI slot is that I have no microphone available in the SundMax jack.

Since when have you been using my drivers?

I suspect that something goes wrong when the settings are being saved.

Under Vista, the settings are saved in this key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96C-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000\Settings
I'm not sure if it's the same for XP, but you can search for "ChannelMask", "Node0Left" etc.

Can you confirm that these values exist?

Yes, I can confirm that both "ChannelMask" & "Node0Left exist but under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96C-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0015\Settings
and the values are:
ChannelMask=3
Node0Left=fff20010
It is amazing that a registry key exists eventhough I have uninstalled the driver...

Does crash happen when the system-startup sound is started?

Probably yes, however when I had problems with this I have uninstall it.
But if it is neccesary I can install it agian although would prefer to test a new release of this driver (the current one doesn't work properly in my system surely )

I need to be able to reconstruct the error in order to fix this which I can't at the moment. If you have any more minidumps, please send them to me.
Additionally, I'd like you to find out if the cmedia card shares an interrupt with another device. Do you have any non-microsoft services installed other than the one from the Panda A/V (start->run->msconfig->services->hide all microsoft services)?

I haven't more minidumps as I uninstalled cmi driver vecause of problems. However if you need new ones please let me know and I install the driver again.
All non-microsoft services are as in the picture below:

I have just installed a cmi driver again and have checked not only Windows sound recorder but also Skype and it is my wondering that when I record a message via Skype test call the playback from Skype is very slow. I've tried many times and even I speak quickly the feedback is very,very slow. I don't know the reason - maybe it is why that only Skype 32-bit version is available now. Have anyone such case like me?

confirmed. Oddly enough, the back and front speakers are swapped here.

Hello, so I have tested another feature. At first I have check SoundRecorder again and it works fine however when I go to the SoundsAndAudioDevices (from the control panel) and choose Voice and next Test hardware button the hardware checks pass but what I can hear next is two or three times quicker than I have recorded during this test. What is it?

Wrong sample rate. Fixed with the next release.

Probably I have found something interesting. As I show above I have only a few non-microsoft services installed but what is also working on my system is Speedfan (4.3x). I observe that in some circumstances when a computer starts and speedfan scans ISA & SMS buses and CMI is installed either WMIxWDM or other bus error occurs. However it is still difficult to state what (CMI or SpeedFan) is the main reason because since I had uninstalled the driver problem disappears and also when SpeedFan is not working I have not observe such errors. On the other hand when I use other audio driver (SounMax ADI1986) and SpeedFan together no problems appear too. I have short time to test CMI and SpeedFan together so if any one could repeat such test it will be very helpful. What do you think Dogbert?

Great job Dogbert!Current version 1.05 works fantastic.As well an installer (64-bit) as the driver. I hope it will still work so good.
If I have some new comments I will inform you.

I am having this kind of issue:

At the moment, the last version of these drivers I can use are version 1.0.1 (or 1.0.2, not tested). BTW from 1.0.3 to the newest drivers I am unable to use due some resource problem Device manager tells me this:


I have tried to disable other devices but I'm pretty surprised because older driver works?! Using Vista 32bit, tried both non-WaveRT and WaveRT drivers. Soundcard is Terratec Aureon 5.1

I'm also getting the same problem. I'm using a Diamond Media Xtreme7.1 C-Media 8768. Using Vista 32-Bit Business Edition. I tried 1.0.1, but had some other issues that at the time i thought were driver related, but I might need to go back and test. It didn't come up with that resources error though.

Can't seem to get SPDIF working either, may be my wire though.... sigh. Tomorrow's another day.

I've enabled UART in version 1.0.2, and that requires an I/O port between 0x300 and 0x330. Can you confirm that there are free I/O ports available in that range?

version bumped to 1.0.6 - the driver should now install on systems which spat out previous versions with "code 12".

side question: is there a utility that can completely remove all CMedia drivers? I have two Xear3D icons on my control panel + the one for your homebrew drivers. I'd like to completely remove all cmedia related drivers/software.

You just have to delete a few files in the windows\system32 folder. My driver puts the files

into the system32 folder, the official cmedia drivers copy

and some more.

The applets from the control panel are embedded in the cpl files.

Well now your drivers work. I get audio from headphones, but I can't get spdif working.

I dunno if its my reciever or my cable, or something i'm missing.

My receiver used to work fine with an old soundcard, but that card shorted out something and stopped spitting out digital and stopped spitting out audio on one output.

I dunno maybe it friend my coax in from my receiver? (all the opticals still work)

First of all thank you for your great work so far!
Finally I could get rid of these four year old c-media drivers.

But another question. I'd like to use Spdif for AC3 and DirectSound for Winamp but still be able to use my 5.1 Multichannel Cinch-Out for EAX in games etc.

Is there any hope that this can be implemented? Meaning getting to work Spdif and 5.1 Speaker Set-Up?

Might this work under Vista?

Thx!!

EAX hasn't been implemented and will never be implemented. You can get 3D sound though, you won't get some effects.
You can use SPDIF and 5.1 sound, you just have to set the speaker configuration to 5.1 before you launch games and to stereo when you're done playing. That's actually not a driver issue but a severe design flaw of Windows.

Version 1.0.7 has been released and an update is strongly recommended.

Here I am again.... so, XP SP2 with latest patches, Terratec Aureon Fun with your latest drivers. Foobar2000 v0.9.4.2 with foo_input_dts and foo_out_ks plugins - and I'm trying to play Dire Straits. no luck. this time driver is installed properly, but choosing KS in Foobar results with silence

for some time I used onboard Soundstorm to get it even in Dolby Digital. it works and my Sony STR-DB798QS gets it right, but Soundstorm is very buggy on my Asus MB so it's disabled again...

Try media player classic instead of foobar. Files with the extension .dts are usually decoded by foobar2000 and then sent to the soundcard as PCM.

Hi! PC keeps locking up when I try your drivers; everything works fine until the installation - whether manual or with the installer - tries to copy the control panel file. Then it locks. Tried several driver versions (including 1.0.9) and the behavior is identical. Works fine on my htpc though. Any suggestions anyone?

Hi, you should tell more details about your hardware (mainboard chipset, soundcard model, other PCI devices if any), operating system (version and service pack level) and software that may interfere (e.g., antivirus software).

I'd like to ask you for the minidumps for further analysis - Windows creates a minidump in C:\windows\minidump each time it crashes with a BSOD.

sorry, no minidump (and no bsod either - just plain ole freeze)
it's not really a big issue, since as long as it works on the htpc it's fine [and by the way, thanks for the effort - it's a real money saver]; just curious whether anybody has seen this before

(system: asrock dual-sata2; venice; 2gb; x800xl; prodigy 7.1 [uninstalled, removed, thoroughly cleaned])

one ther question: from the perspective of your drivers, are there any advantages of using an 8768 over a 8738 (digital only)?

Good question. The only difference I am aware of is that the analog part of the 8768 can handle 88.2kHz / 96kHz streams whereas the analog part of the 8738 is silent at these sample rates.
So if you just want to use the digital part, there aren't any known differences.

Hi there,

I find this project very interesting. I'm currently shopping for a sound card for my HTPC, which will be connected to an external DAC. Could anyone point me to a cheap sound card (author states there are cards for 15usd ) which would work with these drivers? I would also prefer coax over toslink, but will settle for toslink if necessery. Thanks!

I have an incomplete list of supported device on my page - chances are good that you find a supported device when you crosslink their names with a product search engine, e.g. Froogle or eBay or whatever.

Nice. I failed to see that list on my previous visits to your site, but it will do the job for my search. Thanks a lot

EDIT: Diamond Xtreme 7.1 ordered for ~30$ CDN. Can't wait to test it with this nice driver

Hi,

I am able to get the driver working on Philips Dynamic Edge CMI8738 via manual installation, if I run setup I get a blank dialogue box with exclamation mark. Also i noticed that the control panel does not save my settings, and if i open it during playback i get a dialogue box named DirectSoundCreate8() with a message "more data is avaliable". This is with Windows 2000 and ULI M1575 Southbridge.

Apart from those small problems the driver works well for playback over spdif to my receiver, thanks for developing these drivers it is much appreciated.

what's the vendor and device ID of the device?

%*WDM_PSC604.DeviceDesc%=PSC60x, PCI\VEN_13F6&DEV_0111&SUBSYS_060417AB

I think that is correct

OK, thanks for the info. I'll try to reproduce the error on my win2k machine later on.

Do you know whether anyone is working on any exclusive mode output plugins for Foobar, et cetera, Dogbert?

The only WASAPI implementation I've seen so far is n-Track Studio 5.

is it possible to add realtime ac3-encoder to this driver for producing multichannel spdif stream in games and other?

it is certainly possible since the source code is freely available, but at the present there aren't any encoders publicly available which are fast enough in terms of CPU speed and latency to encode an N channel PCM stream to AC3 in realtime, and I don't have the intention to develop such an encoder.

I've found a problem with the 8738 drivers: I often use hibernation (write memory to disk) and when I start the computer again the 8738 output is silent... Only rebooting solves the problem.

This doesn't happen all the time so it may be difficult to reproduce I've gone back to the Terratec drivers and they always work without any problem...

This problem happens with several driver versions, including the latest one.

Software: XP SP2
Hardware: AMD X4200, ASUS mobo & two soundcards: 8738 & Via envy

I've implemented some power management stuff in the current version (1.1.2) which should fix this.

Thanks for the quick update Dogbert!

First tests seem to indicate that everything is working fine now.

@Dogbert

Have you taken a look at the aften ac3 encoder? I helped tweaking it a lot speed-wise and I bet it will run nicely in realitme. Just make sure that you don't use threading (increases latency) and set the bitalloc and exponent strategy to simplest. There exists an ALSA aften plugin for realtime encoding in Linux...

What AC3 encoder? The one from FFmpeg?

The "problem" is that the encoder has to run permanently in kernel space due to the architectural constraints of Windows XP/2000, whereas the ALSA plugins are executed in user mode afaik. Consequently, there are some limitations to obey like maximum execution times, and synchronization issues may arise from that.
sAPO GFX ('system effect audio processing object, global effects') stuff has been introducted in Vista for user mode (?) audio processing - this might be the right place for implementing an AC3 realtime encoder, but I haven't had the time to read up on the documentation from Microsoft to confirm this.

I've just upgraded to Vista and noticed two issues:

Only the wavert driver works, with the regular driver there's no available audio device...?

and

The output is always downsampled to 44.1.

Is this a limitation of the wavert driver? I've set the control panel to allow for all PCM formats up to 96khz and I this worked fine with the same card (Terratec Aureon fun 5.1) and Windows XP.


thanks!

That's a Vista bug - the interfaces of the old drivers aren't deleted and re-created when the driver is being upgraded. A workaround is described here.


That's an intentional design limitation of Vista - the sample rate remains fixed for PCM audio. It can be adjusted ('Advanced' tab), but even if the sample rate of the source and the control panel setting is the same, the audio data is tampered with in some way resulting in the kmixer not being bitperfect anymore. A workaround here is to use non-WaveRT drivers and kernel streaming.