I've tried running Cubase VST3.7r2 under Windows 2000 and, while the program starts, it crashes as soon as I try to do anything. Is there any way to get Cubase running under Windows 2000?
Cubase 3.7 may run under Windows 2000, but it's really pot luck as to whether it runs stable or not for a number of reasons. In fact, it shouldn't really run at all. However, Cubase V5 is fully Windows 2000 compatible, but before you start getting all excited, there are a number of gotchas that have to be sorted out before it becomes worthwhile to move to Windows 2000 as a platform for music. For one, Windows 2000 uses the WDM driver format for sound cards and MIDI and very few cards have a fully functioning WDM driver available at the moment. You may be able to use NT drivers for MIDI devices under Windows 2000, but you're likely to experience timing glitches.
Also, very few multi channel audio cards have drivers available for Windows 2000. For example, at the time of writing, there are beta drivers available for the Echo range of cards, but this driver does not include ASIO support. By all means check to see if your MIDI and audio equipment is supported fully under Windows 2000 and if it is then go for it, but otherwise stick with Windows 98sE.
I hope you can help me with a problem that is driving me nuts! I had an old ISA sound card in my computer. A few months ago I began to get a 'distorted' noise from my speakers, so I borrowed a pair from my neighbour to find the same problem. So presuming the sound card was knackered I went out and bought a new PC1128. Having followed the installation to the letter all was fine for a week or two. Then mysteriously one day the distortion came back again. I checked within device manager and could find no problems with any conflicts and I even changed the resource settings to no avail. I have now re-loaded my sound card for the umpteenth time and even changed the IRQ to 10 by forcing it this way through my BIOS, which is the latest version. This was a very hairy procedure as I'm not a technical person! I also tried changing the PCI slot.
Is there is a conflict somewhere? My system is a two-year-old Pentium 233, 64MB of RAM, one PCI slot free, others hold my sound card, modem and Voodoo 32000 graphics card. I hope you can help me because I now do not know what else to try.
We're pretty stumped by this problem. All we can suggest is that you take out all your cards except the sound card and the graphics card and then reboot the PC. If you're still getting the noise we would say it's probably some kind of conflict with the video card, so try forcing one or the other to use a different IRQ. If the noise doesn't return then it's probably a conflict with one of the other cards. Replace them one by one until the noise returns to find out which is the culprit. Another possibility, of course, is that the sound card is picking up the noise from an external source, although this is unlikely as the latest PCI sound cards are pretty well shielded against outside sources of noise.
I was wondering if there was any way that you could put MP3 files onto CD so that they play in a regular CD player.
It depends on what you mean. You can get software such as Adaptec's Easy CD creator to expand MP3s back to wav files and burn them onto CD on the fly. The resulting CD will be a normal audio format CD.
But I think what you're really asking is whether you can get MP3 files onto CD in a way where they are still MP3 files but you can play them in a normal CD player. The answer to this is no.
But CD music players are starting to appear that will allow you to play back CD-ROMs ofMP3 files. The Terratec MP30 is an example of this. Check out www.terratec.net for more details.
I'm interested in trying out some of the music apps on BeOS as I've heard that the OS is specially designed for media applications. The trouble is that I'm not very technical and worried that I might mess up my installation of Windows. I'm also concerned that my hardware won't be supported. I've got a TNT2 graphics card and a Darla sound card from Echo.
BeOS 5 Personal Edition installs just like an application under Windows, so you can try out BeOS without worrying about having to partition your hard drive. If you don't like it you can uninstall it just like any other Windows application. It was on July's cover disc. The other good news is that both your TNT 2 graphics card and the Echo Darla are supported under BeOS. I n fact BeOS comes with support for both of these as standard so you won't even need to add any drivers.
There are plenty of decent audio applications available for BeOS, such as Objektsynth but unfortunately Be has decided to concentrate its energies on the Internet-appliance market and, as a result, both steinberg and Emagic have announced that they have ceased work on ports of their popular audio and MIDI-sequencing applications to BeOS.
I unknowingly press the CapsLock key sometimes, then have to correct what I've just typed. I recently read about Toggle Keys, one of Control Panel's Accessibility Options that's supposed to make your system beep when you press CapsLock, NumLock or ScrollLock. After activating this feature, though, all I hear is an almost inaudible click when I press any of these keys. How can I make it louder?
The solution to this is rather peculiar. Open a DOS window, navigate to your Windows folder and enter the command copy conwinstart.bat, then press Enter. Type 'echo' followed by a space, press Ctrl-G and then Enter. Then press Ctrl-Z and Enter. After you restart the computer, the key-toggle sounds will be audible. You may also hear an extra beep during Windows start up.
Help, I have just purchased a SoundBlaster 16 PCI sound card. I inserted it into my PC and installed the driver, and everything was OK. Then I installed the audio software from the supplied CD.
Before doing the requested reboot I played a music CD (all worked fine). I then rebooted as requested. I now get a 'Windows Protection Error' before Windows 95 loads.
The Windows Protection Error message indicates that there was a problem loading the protected mode device driver for this product. This could have several possible causes, but the most likely one is a conflict between the protected mode drivers and real mode drivers, which might have been previously installed drivers intended for an older sound card.
Readers may recall that this message is also a typical symptom of the 'AMD 350' bug in Windows 95. If running an AMD processor at 350 MHz or faster using Windows 95, make sure that you have installed the patch. Also, please make sure that you have downloaded the latest drivers for your sound card.
If the error message does not indicate exactly which driver caused the problem, you may want to create a bootlog file -typically, the last line of this file will indicate the device which is causing the problem.
If you have formerly installed a SoundBlaster Pro or SB16 in the system, make sure that you have removed all Dos and Windows drivers for it (older drivers may be installed via config.sys or system.ini files). Also, try installing the Dos drivers for your new sound card.
If you still have troubles, try disabling SB 16 emulation. This will mean that you can't run Dos-based games from within Windows (but then most of these require MSDos mode anyhow). Windows games are not affected. SB16 emulation problems are often due to a conflict over IRQ 5 -this is often used by sound cards, but can also be the default for many printer ports and commonly used by modems or network cards. It would be a good idea to check for any possible IRQ conflict.
The Dos mode emulation drivers also do not like sharing an IRQ. PCI cards in general will share IRQs (the allocation usually depending on which slot each card is in) .The initial allocation of IRQs to cards is done by the Bios and is usually displayed after the Bios has initialised and just before Windows loads. Try to arrange PCI cards in slots so that the sound card has an IRQ to itself.
Finally, though this could be a whole column in itself, these errors may be associated with DirectX, particularly version 6 (which should be updated at least to version 6.1 or the new version 7). Update other device drivers.
I have an acceptable PC system at the moment, which comprises a PII1450 CPU, 9Gb HD, 256Mb memory with DVD drive and two Voodoo 2 cards. This was a top-notch system at one time, but since finishing university my requirements have increased as I rarely use it for word processing and the like. It is now a games machine, and I hope will soon be a fully-fledged DVD player.
I currently have a SB128PCI sound card (but the rear outputs have failed) and a fourpoint Cambridge Soundworks set of speakers. I want to upgrade the sound card to one that will support Dolby Surround and Dolby Digital. My DVD at the moment is software driven, but I have recently purchased a MPeg2 Card (Cineview) that accommodates TV out and S/PIF, among other things. The reason for the card was that even though my system is quite capable, DVD playback does still get jerky and speech out of sync.
I am now in search of a sound card and set of speakers that will deliver Dolby 5.1 performance via my PC, but am unsure which way to turn.
As to which sound card to buy, the most widely available, reliable and supported is the Creative SoundBlaster Live! 1024. Although it's not the pinnacle of sound card technology, it will do the job with digital output and full surround sound. There are many good speaker systems out there, most of which will give you superb sound reproduction. One of the best is the Teac PowerMax 2000, a five-point surround system with potent but well-balanced sub-woofer.
I am trying to get hold of a Napa DAV309 MP3 player, but cannot find a distributor anywhere in the UK. Can you help?
Jungle.com is the UK's biggest distributor of Napa MP3 players and it will sell you a DAV309 for £100 (plus P&P). However, before you rush to the Jungle site (unsurprisingly located at www.jungle.com) and place an order, you might like to consider the all-new Napa DAV310 MP3 player. It costs just £10 more and although its rather tasteless tangerine colour scheme is hardly an improvement on the DAV309 (Best Buy in Shopper 155), it does boast a number of refinements that shouldn't be overlooked. First while the DAV309 only supports CD-R playback, the DAV310 also supports CD-RW playback. Furthermore, the 'Bass Boost' function of the latter model works for both audio CD and MP3 tracks and a 'hold' button prevents buttons being pressed accidentally, whereas the 'Bass Boost' function on the DAV309 could be used only with audio CDs and buttons were unprotected.
The final, and arguably most important benefit offered by the DAV310 is that its battery life is almost twice that of the DAV309. Both DAV309 and DAV310 come with remote control units and will allow you to play video CDs, they both have the same dimensions (which are on a par with a standard audio CD player), but the latter's improved battery life alone is worth the extra £10.
If you don't have the money to buy a portable MP3 player, here is my solution. Check that you have three plugs at the back of the speaker that has the volume control. Now plug the red and the black one in your hi-fi's auxiliary port. Set your hi-fi to Aux and start taping all your favourite MP3s on to an audio cassette. Now you can listen to them almost anywhere.
Well yes, you could also memorise them and hum them to yourself if you didn't have a tape player but that isn't really the point. Putting digital songs on analogue media rather defeats the point of having digital media in the first place. Even if you want to do this, taking the output from the speakers isn't the best way to do this (for a start, not many speakers have anything fancier than a headphone jack. A much better way is to use the line-out socket from your soundcard.