2 Sound Cards

[Jason Fisher]

I don't know if this can be done, but I want to use 2 sound cards on my computer. Can anyone pass on some information or code that would help me out.

[Ghost308]

Correct me if i'm wrong guys! As far as i know, the only way to successfully have two sound cards in one system (assuming you don't get IRQ, DMA, and driver conflicts) is to put each card into its own hardware configuration profile. This means windows can only access one of the sound cards until you reboot and select the other profile. I've never seen any other way to do this but like i said, i could be wrong so please chime in you guys if you have some ideas!

jeff

[Kdev]

2nd-hand knowledge:

My brother does a lot of audio mixing, sampling and recording at home on his computer and he does use 2 sound cards. He is running Windows 98SE and he told me that he just installed both sound cards and if there is an IRQ conflict you must change one of the cards IRQ settings. I'm not sure how you would program using 2 cards but he said that when he uses 2 cards if one card is busy then Windows will automatically send the new output to the other card.

Good luck!

-K

[Ghost308]

Wow thats cool... i'm amazed windows can handle switching between the two audio devices... i'm even more amazed that i'm feeling a sense of awe over something windows can do... :)

[Cakkie]

Selecting which sound card is used cannot be done in plain old VB. 99% of the sound related stuff in VB uses the system that is specified as default in Windows.However, it isn't impossible. You can do this, but that would involve you having to use DirectX, here you can decide which sound system to use. Note one thingm that using DirectX from VB isn't very easy, and a lot of the (neat) functions can only be used from C++. I would advice you (if you really want to get through with this), to check out some sites like planetsourcecode.com and stuff, where example code is available for download.

Tom Cannaerts
slisse@planetinternet.be

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning -- Rich Cook

[Craig Gemmill]

I encounter the same problem a while back when I was working on an automated radio broadcast program. In win95/98/NT<=4 you can use the MMControl to use two sound cards, however in Win2000 this (Some of MCI) is no longer supported. So if you are running in a win95/98/ NT<=4 environment you can take a look at microsofts code sample:
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q180/0/32.ASP

If you are interested in Win2000 then check out this product (Also Works in win95/98/nt):

http://www.binarywork.net/bwmp3.htm

Good Luck

[Craig Gemmill]

PS. You are going to have issues with two sound cards in one system, so here is what I got to work. Use one PCI sound card and an ISA sound card. If that doesnt work you can use one PCI or ISA card and one multifunction card like a Modem/Soundcard. The latter seems to be the easiest to set up!