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