Hacking SigmaTel Drivers for E1705/9400, i need knowledgable helpers - Page 18

so whats the final/latest modified driver for dell xps m1210....

Hi all,
I have tried to play catch up and read all the threads on digital output spifd from the e1705...
I have enabled the spifd , however what cable should i use and where should it come from ? headphone?
Please help , sorry if its allready been posted

Nikolaus, The S/PDIF out is one of the middle pins of the video out referenced to ground. It would be easiest to buy the proper breakout cable which Dell makes available. GEEP

Thank you

nikolaus: You want one of these for S/PDIF:

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/p...9&sku=310-8272
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/p...9&sku=310-8274

Dell spare parts has them.

Don't buy them on ebay - there are older versions of these cables (044CTV and 70tvd) that *won't work* with newer laptops.

Edit: you won't need this hacked driver to get S/PDIF out though...

More info on Vista and STAC9X00

If you load the old WinXP sigmatel drivers for the 4618(WHQL) found earlier in this thread you get Stereo Mix in Attachment 13355

Hello. I have a Dell Dimension E310, and am missing the 'Stereo Mix' option to record sound from my PC. It has "Audigy Advanced MB" soundcard, which uses Sigmatel 9200, i think. Is there a hack for me? If yes, then what zip file do i get? (there are MANY here...) Moreover, HOW do i go about hacking the driver? Here is the ID for the card:

Device id: 8384
Vendor id: 7690
Subsys: 102801C4

Thanks.

<green><front panel=""><headphones><green><front panel=""><headphones><green><front panel=""><headphones>To get Stereo Mix on Dimension E310/3100 i had to download LE50 Sigmatel.zip (4.6 meg) v5.10.0.4866 driver from http://us.lgservice.com/ However, i'm having serious issues getting the Control Panel to load. Here are the errors i receive:

stacgui
XML error: Config[0] Port 0009:<green><front panel=""><headphones><green><front panel=""><headphones> Green <green><front panel=""><headphones>Front Panel Headphones is not supported

XML error: Config[1] Port 0009: Green Front Panel </headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green><green><front panel=""><headphones>Headphones is not supported
<green><front panel=""><headphones><green><front panel=""><headphones><green><front panel=""><headphones><green><front panel=""><headphones><green><front panel=""><headphones><green><front panel=""><headphones></headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green><green><front panel=""><headphones>
<green><front panel=""><headphones><green><front panel=""><headphones><green><front panel=""><headphones><green><front panel=""><headphones><green><front panel=""><headphones> XML error: Config[2] Port 0009:</headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green><green><front panel=""><headphones> Green Front panel Headphones is not supported

<green><front panel=""><headphones><green><front panel=""><headphones><green><front panel=""><headphones><green><front panel=""><headphones><green><front panel=""><headphones><green><front panel=""><headphones><green><front panel=""><headphones></headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green><green><front panel=""><headphones> <green><front panel=""><headphones><green><front panel=""><headphones><green><front panel=""><headphones><green><front panel=""><headphones><green><front panel=""><headphones><green><front panel=""><headphones>

RUNDLL
An exception error occured while trying to run"C:\windows\system32\shell32.dll, Control_RunDLL "C:\windows\system32\stacgui.cpl",Sigmatel Audio"


rundll32.exe -Application Error

The instruction at "0x1003e484" referenced memory at "00x00ba1f64". The memory could not be "read"

Click OK to terminate the program




rundll32.exe -Application Error

The instruction at "0x1000b2a6" referenced memory at "0x00ba3760". The memory could not be "read"

Click OK to terminate the program



Anybody know what all these errors mean?
</headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green></headphones></front></green>

Thanks for that. Stereo Mix is finally working, but Control Panel is NOT. I get the same errors you posted. What/where are "sigmatel drivers for the 4618(WHQL)?" I can't find a link to get in this thread.

Hello...sigmatel 4618(WHQL drivers anyone?

I have bad news. I just found out that the 4 meg LE50 Sigmatel driver does NOT, in any way shape or form, work with "Audigy Advanced MB." Didn't try the 95 meg one yet, but don't expect much difference with that. The problem is "Creative Soundfont Synthesizer" (the whole reason i upgraded to this) is missing as a MIDI device. I'm guessing you need to edit INI files, 92XXD3-2.INI (in MY case) and also STHDA.INF. I basically copied DEBORAH.INI (from the LE50 driver) to 92XXD3-2.INI. But NO luck. Stereo Mix still will NOT show up (although Line In changed to CD Audio under Recording). I haven't tried to edit STHDA.INF yet; i'm not sure what to do there, but it's worth a shot. I still need help figuring out why it's NOT working.

Seskanda, If it is important to you to have Stereo Mix recording and a better synth than the MS one, the MIDI synth sound acheived by installing a Roland VSC is quite superior to the Creative one. It also has the built in ability to record itself to a wave file as well as playback SMF's up to 16 tracks. Many apps can address it directly and it can be made the default MIDI sound device in Windows (I 've only used it in (98se, 2000. and XP). It comes included with Band in a Box. One more thing if you want to get almost serious about audio get an external mixer, really serious get a real sound device too. GEEP

i have Roland VSC it sounds better than MS GS synth; didn't know it works with XP. I think just the DXi plugin does, though. (Mine did NOT come with Band in a Box, btw) Anyhow, besides responding to GS sysex and Portamento MIDI messages, its NOT superior to the Creative synth, because it's based on Soundfont technology. You can edit, add/delete instruments, drumkits & banks with Vienna 2.3 SF editor. AFAIK, Roland VSC does NOT provide these features. However, Roland Hypercanvas lets you edit the sounds (still a far cry from soundfonts), yet it's a DXI plugin ONLY.

Back on topic, how can i get Stereo Mix to work with the Sigmatel 9200 driver on my Audigy Advanced MB CD? I downloaded the 95 meg driver from LG, but it looks the same as the LE50, (except it seems to also have its own full-blown Control Panel, whereas the LE50 really didn't, it just had an option in Control Panel to turn Digital Output on/off) I'm gonna try the STAC9200 driver for E1705/9400 from Dell's support site, since there's already hacked INI w/ a real Control Panel+Stereo mix. Also, Dell seems to provide the Audigy Advanced MB upgrade there, too. Because if i try to install the version off my CD, it won't work.

SESKANDA, I have used VSC in XP. I didn't know that editing soundfonts was an issue and if you have done better for your prefs well understood but OEM sound is not as good IMO even in Audigy 2 Platinum which I have . You are right about Hypercanvas which is great but a DXi. If you are editing SF's, I can't help but think you are running a Pro audio app which would support at least VSTi. There are capable SF players that are VSTi. Anything from EMU, now owned by Creative is fine...... Back to the subject: As I own an e1705 I have tried the hacked drivers on and off again and my Creative and SF synth never stopped working. But if you go this route there is an abundance of noise that can only be silenced by selecting the mic/line in and turning it down all the way (not just muting). Yes you get some useless Sigmatel Panel controls but it seems to work fine. I gave up on it until I hear of something better. Take a Y adapter so you can "listen in" and go from output back to line input. If you need a live external source use a separate mixer. I don't know if the 310's noise is as terrible as on a laptop but a 60 dollar mixer with 2 mic inputs will blow away what you are trying and your machine will stay stable and predictable. You can still plug your out into the mixer. Bear in mind due to some internal Sig.9200 buffering if you use an ASIO driver for low latency you won't get true low latency. Good luck whatever route you choose. GEEP PS What app is it that you are using?

VSC 3.2 works for you in XP? It must be the DXi then, because i get this error when i reboot after i install the Windows driver:

"VSC's MIDI Device or the audio device to be used for VSC's output
cannot be opened
Playback unavailable at this time."

The readme for the Windows driver says it works w/ Windows 2000 Pro, so it should, in theory, work on XP, but i haven't had any luck with it. Doesn't the Dimension E310/3100 use the same on-board sound card as the E1705/9400? That is, they both have a Sigmatel STAC 9200, right? But this hacked driver seems to NOT work for me or others that have a Dim E310/3100, or else it needs to be hacked differently for us. The only difference is the subsystem ID, which is: 102801C4 for the E310. I wanted to add the string for it in one of the INI files, but i'm NOT sure which of them i should add it to.

Seskanda, Yea VSC 3 in XP Pro. Set it up as the default MIDI output device in the audio control panels? Then select the MS MIDI mapper in your app. This will be better than VSC straight from the app.. I suppose the Creative implementation of the Sigmatel plugin archetecture could interfere with VSC. If you have XP Media Edition disable ALL of its MCE components from starting at boot. Every Pro Audio interface maker says their drivers work with XP Pro and XP Home only. As for D310 having STAC 9200 I believe it is but run Belarc Advisor or such to identify for sure. Hint: If you have rear and center channel analog line outs it is 9220, 9221, etc.. Understand that while 9200 has neary everything inside it including amps not all features are wired up nor addressed in drivers. Because it isn't inside a laptop it may give you much lower input noise. The claimed specs are very good like -92db S/N or better for the chip but in a laptop it'll be more like -57. What are your main applications for MIDI? . I think if you are particular enough to edit SF's that a VST plugin like Bandstand or Cayote may be for you. You can find Banstand in a torrent if you want to "try before you buy". GEEP .........PS If you must have MIDI at system level there may be a dedicated VSTi or DXi driver/wrapper that will let a Hypercanvas run. Bandstand runs as a stand alone so a simple MIDI loopback device just might be necessary.

I thought I'd chime in for the status of things as I've had it for getting MIDI to work.

Back in the day, I used to use Yamaha S-YXG50 (there's an XP version). It's nice, but still sort of limited.

I've also tried a whole slew of software synthesizers. AudioCompositor sounds good, but it parses most MIDI files incorrectly, not to mention the fact that you HAVE to try to find a serial for it because the author is MIA.

Timidity sounds OK, but the reverb isn't configurable enough, and the quality isn't ideal... Not to mention the fact that I never managed to get it working with a loopback driver for general MIDI input.

The solution I ended up settling on is several pieces of software, tied together program called Cantabile Lite (1.2). Supporting software is the VST instruments sfz (a SoundFont software synthesizer), Freeverb (or some other VST reverb plugin, which one isn't really important), the ASIO software driver ASIO4ALL which adds ASIO support to my i9400 (I use this just because it supports a bigger buffer th an Cantabile), and a midi loopback driver (I don't recall which one I'm using, but this is also not very relevant, any will do).

Cantabile can act as a VST host, with up to two racks with two plugins each in the free version. Why do you need two racks? Well, because there's a bug somewhere where something is ignoring program changes on channel 10 setting it to a drum kit... so the drum kit would always be mapped to a regular instrument. You could set the channel to the drum kit manually in sfz, but then when you played a new file or restarted the same file, it'd reset it back away from the drum kit.

My solution ended up being to have a second copy of sfz running on the second rack, just handling the drum kit. It has channel 10 permanently set to the drum kit program, but I set Cantabile to ignore program changes on channel 10 for that rack.

Anyhow, the eventual setup is:

Cantabile 1.2 Lite
- Rack 1: sfz (all instruments except chan 10), reverb plugin
- Rack 2: sfz (just chan 10, drums), reverb plugin
ASIO4ALL driver

The loopback driver I just use when I want to redirect MIDI output there and not just play a MIDI file.

Cantabile supports saving your workspace, so I can load up this whole shebang at once without re-doing it every time. What I get as an end result is a fairly general purpose software GM midi synth. Unfortunately, sfz isn't multithreaded (apparently multithreaded VSTi are frowned upon), and it's fairly processor intensive, so I can't always use the highest quality in sfz. Still, this solution sounds excellent!

Cantabile runs different VSTs in different threads, though (it seems), so if I had the pro version of Cantabile, I could have 16 copies of sfz running, each one only handling one MIDI channel. That would probably do a pretty good job of splitting the load between my CPUs. sfz shares memory between various instances, so even when I load up a hefty 100MB+ soundfont, they just all share one copy of it.

Playing MIDI files from WinAmp or another player into Cantabile through the loopback driver produces really strange timing glitches (sounds like crap), which is why I use Cantabile's built in MIDI file player. But for a MIDI instrument (I'm not a musician, so I play around with a virtual midi keyboard), it works fine.

So that's my setup. It took a while to get it all working properly, and I still sometimes need to tweak it based on the file (if, say, it doesn't have a drum kit on chan 10, which is fairly rare, or if the file is very intensive and I need to change sfz's quality). My only regret is that with the free version of Cantabile, the limitation of 2 racks means I'm mostly limited to one CPU core, which sfz doesn't have much trouble maxing out.

Sadly, Cantabile doesn't support large buffers because it's assumed that musicians want minimal latency. But if you're playing a MIDI file and want to be able to smooth over the demanding bits of the song that will peg your CPU, you're going to need a buffer measured in seconds, not samples :P ASIO4ALL helps with this since it supports much larger buffers, but they're still much smaller than what I'd really like.

So despite the complexity, the workspace being saved means I can just double click a file and it loads up ready to play.

PS: CakeWalk uses sfz for its soundfont synth, IIRC. So sfz is something that is used professinally.

PPS: The reason I'm using a reverb VST on each rack is because sfz's built-in reveb isn't configurable. On or off. The problem is the reverb quality is a tad lacking, and it's very tame. Sometimes I have trouble telling if the reverb is on or off. I prefer having control so that I can set the reverb to a level I like. Not so much that everything is muddy, but enough that the music is going to sound a lot more rich, not so damned flat like it is without reverb.

PPPS: You can control reverb in sfz+, but that's commercial, not free. $60 for sfz+. Since the guy was bought out by Cakewalk, it eventually sort of evolved into Cakewalk Dimension Pro, which sells for almost $400.

Gus, Really very informative and interesting. My question is based on the fact that Sound Canvas is the standard for judging a Pro Midi GM/GS. Does this Cantabile setup with reverb plugins support individual sends into the reverb? Professional General Midi or .kar files have this data embeded as CC (continuous controllers) which can change rev. send throughout a song for individual instruments. ( No reverb on bass is common to avoid a muddy mix) How about the CC for chorus send does Cantabile have it. I went to the web site and see no send return loops nor multi prossesor support. Still I think you can find a multitimbral soundfont player with built in reverb that will follow CCautomation to slip into Cantabile. ....EDIT later RGC sfz+, yeah I got it from Audionews.ru. It has built in reverb and chorus so I can assume you can't edit the CC's for these effects in your app. It had no sounds of its own so I got some free sf2 drum kits at Angular Momentum VST. Stand alone has problems but VST in host good but drum mode doesn't sustain as it should from a key tap (sustain pedal perhaps) and the HiHat cymbals don't cut each other off as they must. A dedicated drum VST is advisable. If you choose to go there, sf support is cool but a good pro drum kit is 80 to 300 meg. for 8 to 12 drums as opposed to 9 meg for 60 or so. EZ Drummer is a good comprimise or Battery 3 .

Reaper demo is available and fully functional with no time limit if you can deal with that level of complexity. Then there is SONAR 6 PE. If you torrent it's "try before you buy".

I will tell you that such difficulty as you describe about playing a MIDI file from Winamp can usually be solved by routing thru the MS MIDI then to your MIDI generator.

Another much overlooked option is the Direct X MS Synth which has reverb but is only directly accessible to apps like Winamp, not MS system MIDI nor Vanbasco Karaoke Player. If you compare it to Creatve you will find fatter bass and tighter reverb but on some files crash cymbals are a bit much. Try comparing the 2 with Sublime - Santeria.kar the 22k one and you will instantly hear the difference. Winamp / options/preferences/plugins/input/Nullsoft MIDI player/configure/Device/DirectMusic Microsoft Synthesizer. Good Luck with what ever your choices. GEEP

Where in this thread can I find the most suitable .ini for my 9400?

Pinko, About 100 post ago maybe more. There is a link to it. EDIT: It is at post 206. Rirht click and save link as. It should show up as Sigmatel.exe. It has the modded ini included in the install. Read the surrounding posts so you will know how to maximize quality.