Geonik's DirectX Sound Driver

by George Nicolaidis


Description

This is a wave output driver for Buzz that uses DirectSound. It should perform better than the standard multimedia wave output driver in terms of latency (I get 40ms). It requires that DirectX 3 or later is installed on your system.

Installation

Put the dll in <buzzdir>/WaveOutput/

What's new

Release 1 Initial release
Release 2 Faster, less clicks, small bugs, new registry key 'CpuLag'
Release 3 Quantized buffer for efficiency, Cpulag to the config dialog

Usage

Select the driver in Buzz wave output configuration and press 'config' for more options

C o n f i g u r a t i o n

Device Select your DirectSound Device for output (not important unless you have two or more soundcards)
Latency How many ms of audio data to buffer. Lower values make Buzz more responsive and increase as well the probality of pops and noise
Resolution In how many parts to divide the buffer. For example a latency of 80ms and a resolution of 4x creates four buffers of 20ms each
Timing How frequently the driver refreshes its buffers. Should be less than latency / resolution
Dither Slightly better sound quality, some more overhead too

Notes

This release should be more stable than its predecesor... There is that new registry key, 'CpuLag' that seems to be all-important. The faster your cpu the smallest it can be. For my P200 I found that 1500 gave the best results. If you get clicks and noise for all possible values of Latency, then try to change that key. Perhaps I will add it to the config dialog later. For ideas, suggestions, flames, etc mail

Contact Information

Author George Nicolaidis
Email geonik@egnatia.ee.auth.gr
HomePage http://egnatia.ee.auth.gr/~geonik/home