LineIn plugin for Winamp 2/5 Documentation - Devices


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Different kinds of devices

There are two kinds of devices to be recognized:
  1. Soundcards, etc.
  2. Input devices (line-in, mic-in, etc.)
The first kind can be selected with the dev option in my plugin. To do that you can go to the config dialog of my plugin (see Customizing for a description) and view the list of devices listed:
Device list
The picture shows the lower part of the dialog with the first four devices listed (most people will only have two or three entries) (note that in version prior to v1.60 the tabstrip wasn't there, as well as the alias column).
The first device is the Windows Wavemapper device, this is a device that 'maps' to other devices (and can do things like samplerate conversion). The second device is the recording device of my onboard soundcard (a Yamaha), the third is the System Waverec device of my Terratec soundcard (which has a lot of 'devices'), the fourth is also a device of my Terratec soundcard. I'll refer to these sounddevices as soft from now on.
Just to show the correlation between this list and the real devices installed (I'll refer to those as hard), here is a screenshot of the sounddevices in Device Manager (I've circled the sounddevices):
Device manager screenshot
As you can see I've got three 'hard' sounddevices, which all produce one or more 'soft' devices from which you can input sound (waveIn devices, the devices listed in the config dialog of my plugin).
Also, each sounddevice can normally record from more than one source. This is dealt with in (loosely) two ways, most soundcards are like my onboard Yamaha card, they export one device that can be opened and you can select from which input the soundcard records in the windows mixer (sndvol32.exe or doubleclick the little yellow icon in the systray, or see Basics for a description):
Recording settings in the windows mixer
All these devices are accessible through the single (soft) sounddevice called DS-XG Wave Recording.
The other way is to have one (soft) sounddevice for each source, as my Terratec card does and also the Virtual Audio Cable uses this method.

Different APIs, standard and DirectSound

As of v1.60 of my plugin DirectSound devices are supported as well as the standard audio devices, there is a big difference in coding for these two types of devices, but it makes almost no difference wether you use one or the other with my plugin. This is a list of differences between the two: Normally you would use the standard APIs, especially because the DirectSound has almost no advantages (yet), but if you run into any trouble using the standard APIs they can be a life saver.
NOTE: If you have an NT/2000/XP system the DirectSound API's are usually better supported than the standard API's, so try them. On 9x/ME it's the other way around (the standard API's are usually better supported than the DirectSound API's). But keep in mind this depends heavily on your drivers.

Aliases

Introduction

In v1.60 I introduced support for device aliases, this is necessary to specify DirectSound devices without having to memorize very large numbers and is more logical anyhow.
To give a device an alias, go to the config dialog of my plugin, you will see a list of devices in the lower-half of the screen, it should look like this (note that the DirectSound tab is only displayed if your system supports DirectSound):
Device list
Or, if you selected the DirectSound tab:
Device list - DirectSound devices
You can see that both lists contain an alias column, this column contains the aliases for respective devices. If it is empty there has not been created an alias for the device, in my case you can see that I have made a few aliases: This means I could use: But NOT:

Creating an alias

To create an alias you have to double-click on the device you want to create a device alias for in the device list, after double-clicking you will get a screen similar to this:
Standard Device Alias dialog
If you double-clicked on a DirectSound device you would have gotton a similar dialog, only with different text. Simply fill in the desired alias in the textbox and press OK. Now you will see the alias listed in the device list. To change an alias simply doubleclick the device again. (BTW, the dialog shown here is a little outdated, since starting with v1.70 the dialog will show the device name instead of the id)

Deleting an alias

Before v1.70 it wasn't possible to delete an alias, but now it is, just select the device with the alias you want to delete in the device list and press Del, you can also double-click the device and make the alias an empty string.

What to use

Normally you won't touch the dev option of my plugin, it will do what you want in most cases, you will however almost always want to change the source of the sound in the windows mixer (go to Basics for a description). There are however situations in which you might want to use the dev option, when you have a soundcard that has one soft sounddevice for every source, but also if you want to use Virtual Audio Cable (or something similar), or want to be sure you're recording from the right device (and theoretically it should give a slightly smaller delay if you input from the right device directly, this difference should be very small however).
To use a different device than the wavemapper you only have to specify the device ID (or alias) listed in the config dialog of my plugin, if I wanted to record directly from the System WaveRec device of my Terratec card, I would use the following options: If I wanted to record from the Virtual Audio Cable (not listed in the screenshot, but it has device ID 9), I would use these options: Of course you can use any options you like in combination with the device option, if I wanted to record at a samplerate of 96000 Hz on my WaveRec 1/2 device (which has device ID 2), I would use these options: If I wanted to record from the line-in of my onboard Yamaha however, I would use the following options (in combination with settings in the windows mixer): Possibly I would like to listen to my radio through Winamp, then I might use these options (again in combination with settings in the windows mixer, as described in Basics): These are the three ways I can use to specify my EWS88 MT WaveRec 1/2 device (which is connected to a tape recorder): Up  |  Previous  |  Next  |  Down


To contact me, please mail to: th.v.d.gronde@hccnet.nl
I hope you'll enjoy my program(s).