How to configure spaghetti with sound card dac?

[ElektroFreak]

In any DIY project patience is of the essence. Don't let yourself get too frustrated and if you do, stop for a few days. Your frustration will cause you to misjudge things, hampering your ability to get to the bottom of whatever the issue is.

I'm assuming you have the card set to use 8 channels in the sound card setup utility, right?

[Grix]

Yes. When I try to test the sound ouput in the ulitity I can hardly hear any sound that makes sense though. When it's supposed to say "Right speaker" I hear mostly scraping.. Is this normal? After all, I only plugged in a stereo headset into the Center channel.

[drlava]

You shouldn't hear anything out of the center channel when it says 'Right speaker'
Can you measure your USB voltage to confirm it's still at 5V with everything including the amp plugged iin? Some laptops have a weak 5V output that might not be able to drive the large DC/DC on that converter card.

[300EVIL]

Can you measure your USB voltage to confirm it's still at 5V with everything including the amp plugged iin? Some laptops have a weak 5V output that might not be able to drive the large DC/DC on that converter card.

Yes, preform this step. Test the output voltages on the cards test points while trying to play a wav file. I did experiment with this circuit on 10 or more laptops and have never experienced a problem with under-current or voltage issues before but that doesn't mean it cannot happen. I beleve the standard for USB is now 500mA minimum which would be plenty of current for powering both boards.

Also, play the max.wav file in Electrofreak's tutorial. You should have 5V between the "MISC OUT" Pad and ground.

Please verify and get back to us.
Thanks!
Adam

[Grix]

Yes it's still 5V, but not exactly.. It's like a steady 4,86 V or something. Where it's supposed to be 12V and -12V it's 11,96V and -11,68V .

I tried the max.wav and the first thing I saw was that I GOT OUTPUT FROM THE LASER . It was just a random green dot moving back and forth between two spots. I measured the voltage and it was NOT a steady 5V on the misc out :/ . It varied a lot from 0,5V to 5V . Is this supposed to happen? could just be a crappy multimeter.

Then I tried another wav I made in laserboy, and inspected the laser, and I noticed that the galvos were spinning like they should! But there was no laser output, strange..

Finally at least something works

EDIT: Ok I think there's something wrong with my laptop.. Remember that scraping sound I mentioned before? Well on my main computer that sound is crisp and clear. Obviously the laptop is not very lasershow-friendly :/
I tried the max.wav on my main computer, and wth, I measured a steady 0.08 V on the misc out, that can't be right, can it?

[bryce007]

I tried that file you linked for windows 7 64-bit, and everytime I try to open the sound card's control panel, my comp freezes, and I have to hard re-boot. Did you do anything else to get it to work.

In fact, I can't get my galvos to budge at all, even in 32-bit

[Aidan]

I'm not sure about everyone else, but I have my card set to 6 channels, not 8.

I couldn't seem to get any life out of 8.

I find a handy little thing is the "Audio System Status" under the channel selection, you will see that little bar graph max out once its getting a signal of any sort.

When I first started using HE-LS it was basically a huge mess, jumbled output etc

It made no sense, I tried all orders of channel numbers but couldn't get it to do anything.

I thought I would download LFI player and give that a go, ummmmm worked first time.

So that pointed me to HE-LS, so I copied the EzAud DLL and CFG (INI) from the LFI to the HE-LS dir and everything started working correctly (Why? I Dont know, I just know it worked).

My settings are as follows :

X=1
Y=2
R=5
G=4
B=3
I=6
AL=7
AR=8

Hope this helps.

[Grix]

Oh yeah, LFI player works! Sweet!

However some frames are very morphed and flashy, f.eks the gears in the default ilda in Laserboy. Is this supposed to happen at 20kpps? Or do I need to tune something?

Also, elektrofreak, I've sent a mail to the spaghetti crew about the computer change, how long do you think they'll take to answer? it's been 3 days I think.

[bryce007]

Oh yeah, LFI player works! Sweet!

However some frames are very morphed and flashy, f.eks the gears in the default ilda in Laserboy. Is this supposed to happen at 20kpps? Or do I need to tune something?

Also, elektrofreak, I've sent a mail to the spaghetti crew about the computer change, how long do you think they'll take to answer? it's been 3 days I think.

Are you using the newest version? 1.1.6? I couldn't get that to work, only 1.1.5 works for me.

[ElektroFreak]

Oh yeah, LFI player works! Sweet!

However some frames are very morphed and flashy, f.eks the gears in the default ilda in Laserboy. Is this supposed to happen at 20kpps? Or do I need to tune something?

Also, elektrofreak, I've sent a mail to the spaghetti crew about the computer change, how long do you think they'll take to answer? it's been 3 days I think.

Good stuff!

LFI player uses only one specific type of ILDA file, type 1. This means that some ILDA files will not work properly. You can buy a copy of ILD SOS from drlava and convert other ILDA files to type 1 so that LFI will play them properly..

@bryce: Try copying the EZAudDAC.ini and EZAudDAC.dll files from the LFI player v1.1.5 directory before you install 1.1.6, then replace the files that come with 1.1.6 with those that you copied from 1.1.5. Hopefully that'll clear up your issues.