Hacking SigmaTel Drivers for E1705/9400, i need knowledgable helpers - Page 8

Seeing my first post ever I am so sorry for being more verbose than a Linux install.

I'm not sure if this is a big "duh" but I noticed that you can get audio out of the "s-video" jack in different ways, depending on what cable you plug into it. (This is from the M90 support section)

Have a look at this:

http://support.dell.com/support/edoc....htm#wp1054252



1
S-video TV-out connector
3
S/PDIF digital audio connector
5
S-video connector

2
composite video adapter
4
composite video-output connector


Hope it helps, if not just ignore me

Anyway thanks for your dilligent work on this driver update.

i have a dell e1505 but when i hack the driver and enable the imput monitor it only lets me hear the left side, i hear the LG50 sigmatel drivers will work for my e1505 anyone have those drivers plz?

Jockomo: The only duh is why did they do this? ...They sell the adapter. Ever try to replace a Dell motherboard: 1/2'' short of room for an ATX. That's how they get yah. In fairness even a 1705 is space limited.
BACK on Subject Veazers original project for e1705/9400. it has been 6 months since the initial challenge. Could someone post a simple step by step to accomplish significant audio options both with and without Audigy Software? I don't care if I have to dump Audigy and lose the EQ. I have tried the ini at post #64 expanding it and replacing the file of the same name in the drivers onboard audio folder but of no avail. Is Audigy in the way or must I really install the LG Driver too. I don't want to have to reinstall the Dell driver. A proper .ini should not be 4 times the size of the original. I inspected the contents of this .ini and it references features that the Sigmatel 9200 chip dosen't support in any circuit but that the 9220 does. It is little wonder that some people have found sliders and EQ interfaces that simply dont do any thing. I surmise the core drivers for other chips ie. Sigmatel 9220 to be the same but the .ini's, reg. entries, etc. written by the installers of different chips merely call out different features.

Sumyungai, thanks but I don't want to use other software;
I would like to use recording option in hacked driver.
Soundblaster live's driver had a recorded option called "what you hear"
who allowed users to record whatever sound you're listening in that moment
(internet, tv...).
akal

andcalc if you don't need to record your line in in that mix a passive stereo pot (ganged voltage divider)inline from output back to input. Cheap and easy but make sure you mute the input monitor. if you start with the gains low you may be able to use just a stereo 1/8" to 1/8" cable. with a stereo Y you can listen to what is happening.
Soundblaster Live does this including the the mic, line, etc (and more analog sources in Audigy 2) but it is an analog switching / mixing trick as evidenced by no latency on the analog sources regardless of driver type. It is also the reason why you get echo with a pro audio app if you have both software monitoring turned as well on as the input your recording unmuted in your sound cards control panel. Hearken back to veasers recommendation of using Wuschels Asio4All for all with pro and semi-pro apps and achieving 3 ms latency. I dont think any typical players will use an Asio driver but can coexist. The real limitation is that you can't utilize multiple sound cards with ASIO. Asio4All may be confused by more than one sound card and not work at all. It seems there will be an ASIO driver specifically for the Sigmatel chips if there isn't one already.

Oh My hat's off to Falerus who is way up the road from me on this stuff and has provided something concrete. I welcome his tuteledge yet hope my views contributes in some way.
deeg you may be onto something but lets take a look at does LG50 use the same chip. Then does it implement the same circuit options like only one stereo input and no S/PIDIF input etc. If it has a Sigmatel 9200 it MUSI implement S/PDIF output. LG50 might in fact have a S/PIDIF input be it optical or wired, may be 48khz only or 44, 48, 88. 96. Which are supported A/D conversions in the E1705 All of these can have software panel controls. And just because Dell crippled an allready limited chip with respect to rec/mon options don't think the 9200 can't do all that: It can. In fact it does 24 bit 192khz A/D conversion if the circuirt will let it though I've only tested it out to 24/96 in the 1705. Don't waste the extra 8 bits as they sit mostly below the noise: I was left with a -59 db of dc offset and -74 of residual noise which would be not bad if we're talkin'about a tape recorder. I searched for the LG50 but found no relevant info. Well try the LG50 drivers anyway but have your Dell driver installer handy and be ready to pick out any .ini's by date and time that are not uninstalled nor overwritten. Some nice guy at Dell or Sigmatel could easily create a complete installer that would put everything in place based on hardware found. If that happens it'll be about a week after this hack is complete and we can all rescue our machines from there ephasia.

Very thanks Geep, ingenious. You said I just link headphone output to line in input by 1/8" to 1/8" cable and record "line in". Another question, please.
How good is Sigmatel 9200's A/D converter ? I mean, can I record 24 bit/96 Khz analog signals with high quality? Is it better to use standard driver or ASIO driver?
Best wishes
Akal

andcalc: Yes you can and the converter is good but you can see that S/N is not what Sigmatel offers (better than) -90db. A low noise high level signal entering your line in then attenuated in the mixer panel should improve S/N substantially. I dont mean +4 db, you must not exceed the inputs headroom.
ASIO if low latency is important, that is to say if you want to here effect plugins in close to real time as you are recording. WDM drivers are simply fine if you can tolerate a lag of a 20th or 10th of a second. Don't use MME drivers the options are very limited and I've not been able to get 24bit to work with MME.
Remember each audio program you use will require driver preferences to be set. Most non-pro apps like players will simply default to WDM or MME and may not use ASIO at all. And that is fine for what they are meant to do. Case in point Winamp will play back a 24/96 file but to my knowledge still doesn't support ASIO driver.
Having an ASIO installed is an option available to apps that can use it and does not supplant your sound cards resident drivers. Wuschels ASIO4All works well but only run it in the prescence of one sound card. WDM can see many inputs and outputs from multiple cards and leave them assignable to individual tracks.
If you ever need to record a live performance to say 4 tracks on your laptop plug in another sound device via USB or 1394, Set your audio program to use WDM, assign inputs to tracks armed to record and hit record. Oh if one of the devices like an iMic is limited to 16bits you must set the program prefs accordingly. To do this in ASIO you would need a dedicated multi-channel audio interface and that would surely come with its own dedicated ASIO drivers.
I hope I haven't strayed too far off subject. Feel free to tell me to go to a different thread.

Can anyone use a microphone with their late-model Inspiron for VOIP or in games that have VOIP features? I can get mine to record wavs, but it doesn't work in Skype, teamspeak, ventrilio, etc.

Is there anyway to "uninstall" this hack? I realize it won't let me use my 5.1 USB headphones. I tried reinstalling Creative's Audigy MB software but it won't kick in either.

Not another reinstall???

HomerJ A Core 2 and already? ...you didn't. D'oh!! You are going to be fine you will get the driver installer from Dell in a download. Uninstall your hack driver through the Device Manager. Then install the Dell driver from anywhere on you computer.It may need to be unzipped first. If you only altered som .ini files and didn't change there names nor add new .ini's they should be overwritten with the correct ones by the installer.
More suscinctly from Start Menu go to Control Panel then Sounds and Audio Devices, now click the Hardware tab select Sigmatel Codec, now Driver tab. (You may be able to roll back the driver but those altered .ini's D'oh.) From this little window you can uninstall that nasty driver or choose Update Driver and navigate to your fresh Dell driver installer. If you choose to uninstall you should be able to just run the installer from anywhere on in your machine.
CASE IN POINT (you can skip this or save it for later) whenever you start to play with .ini's, registration entries or even new beta codecs it is a good practice to create a new folder, give it the name of the file you are altering plus a word like old or last working and stuff a copy in there before you make your alterations then when things go awry you merely copy back out to it's original place and let it overwrite the modified one. I always do this with the lame_enc.dll just incase the new 3.97b3 acts funny (by the way it's fine).

Apsalus a little outside my area of expertise but I think there must be a way. Tell me what devices does Skype use ? Look around your programs preferences and options for anything audio. I assume that these programs simply default to a USB sound device and possibly reject anything inputing stereo and or high resolution. For VOIP the audio signal is ultra compressed and low res low sample frequency signal. I think our onboard sound only goes down 11 khz 16 bit. mabey 8bit There are ACM codecs in Windows that get down to telephone specs like 6 or 8 khz at 4 bit res. A program like Skype needs to use one of these codecs or it's own built in one (doubtful)

I havent had a chance to look all through this thread yet, but has anyone tried this in Vista...I just ordered a 9400 to replace my 9300 ( ) and I am using Vista as my OS (testing).

Its due to arrive 11th October

VOIP apps work fine with an analog microphone on my desktop, but I have to mute the microphone output in order for it to work properly. I don't know if this is a phenomenon specific to integrated audio chipsets. The first image is a shot of my nForce 2 volume control panel on my desktop. VOIP works flawlessly once I mute the microphone output. The second is a shot of my Inspiron E1705/9400 volume control panel. The last shot shows the Creative Sound Blaster panel. Note that there are two unused sliders. I wonder what those could possibly be used for.

Veazer, Thanks for the "update". You see I have only used Asio4All in the presence of 3 sound cards 1 nvidia (Abit onboard) and 2 Creative ( a Sound Blaster 128 or 512 and an Audigy 2 zs Platinum ) I wanted 6 inputs at 44khz which the Platinum won't do on its own(48/16 only w/asio). Either 3 sound cards or 2 of the same brand confused ASIO4All. I have not tried it in my Dell laptop yet. But I will. I'll also be hunting the Sigmatel ASIO unless you say you think no benefits. I suppose IT will only recognize a Sigmatel chip.
I must say your initial idea of a driver hack to be noble and ambitious yet I see your reason for backing away.
In as much as Sigmatel says that they support a simple plugin format format saying little about it except that programmers and manufacturers will have "support". I hope that isn't only for developers who buy thousands of chips or make a special agreement (Creative Audigy).
If Sigmatel is open about plugin policies we may see plugins popping up from third party independant programmers.

Huh.? What?? I'm lost.


Did all that. The problem is not with the ini files or anything like that. The problem is that now that the registry keys have been created, they won't get removed. Even after reinstalling the dell driver, nothing will work.

HomerJ Then do the uninstall of all Sigmatel audio drivers and run a registry cleanup program without the sound drivers and you will be able to remove reg entrys that are invalid which reference nonexisting sound drivers . Now I am pretty sure you can freshly install Dells driver pack. Best of luck man.

Apsalus as you can see if you read my response to Veazer that I know your Desktop audio panel though I have disabled that now at the bios level in lieu of the 2 Creative cards. It was just fine but I needed multi inputs and much quieter one: the Abit nforce2 line in had a high DC offset which may not be your case.
Back to Dell/Sigmatel I have the same 2 greyed out faders. When the Creative software gets installed it polls for available hardware and then writes the proper ini's registry etc.. The next Sig chip 9220 has like 6 or 8 outputs.
The requirement of muting is not necessarily connected to integrated audio. Again check for prefs and options because a well written program should be able to run scripts that will auto mute what needs to be muted upon opening and hopefully return to previous state upon closing. If it dosen't in the most recent release. Find there "wish list" and log your feature request. Until you get that a shortcut to multimedia properties placed in the quick launch should save time muting better than right clicking the little speaker. Let us know what you uncover.