************************************************************************* Important Hints to the ARC88 driver version 2.12 for Windows NT 4.0 ************************************************************************* 1. System Requirements 2. Installation 3. News 4. Attention: Windows System Sounds ------------------------------------------ 1. System Requirements ------------------------------------------ * Windows NT 4.0 Build 1381 (Service Pack 3) ----------------------------------------- 2. Installation ----------------------------------------- * Ensure that you are logged on with administrator rights at Windows NT * First remove an older ARC88 driver by use of "Control Panel->Multimedia->Devices" and restart the Windows system. Once again logon at Windows NT as an administrator. * Now install the new ARC88 driver by use of "Control Panel->Multimedia->Devices->Add->From Disk". * Change to the language directory of the driver disk, acknowledge this directory and choose a driver version from the subsequent appearing list. * In some cases (update) Windows NT requests you to restart your system. In this case - restart your system really. * After the installation the ARC88 Sound System is ready to operate. ------------------------------------------ 3. News ------------------------------------------ Version 2.12 * MCI volume control function * Now you can disable the error messages about Device Conflicts (Not supportted Digital Record & Play), like the messages about Sample Rate Conflicts. Please see Arc88 Manager - Settings. This is useful when using programms which does a functionality test with all available wave devices. (eg. emagic Logic Audio, Steinberg VST) But please note that this doesn't remove the cause of such messages. If an error occurs and you have switched off the error/warning messages it is much harder to find its cause. * New PunchIn- and AutoRecord Monitoring (see Input sections of Arc88 Manager) Meaning of the monitor switches: - "On": switchs the input signal of the channel pair to the appropriate output - "OnPunch": like above, but does it first if an application starts a punch recording session. This feature is implemented in Samplitude only. - "OnRec": like above, but does it first if an application starts a recording session. - "MutePlay": if active, the playback signal of an application will be removed from the ARC88 output when one of the monitor modes mentioned above starts. Else, the playback signal and the monitor signal will be mixed together. (Not new: all monitoring is supported by the hardware and thats why handled without any latency ("zero latency monitoring")) * Independent Record Devices - see Settings - Synchronization (makes multiple separate recording session with single record devices possible) * Additional procedures to check successful hardware initialization at windows start * Additional procedures to check successful hardware initialization * More resistent against any kind of abnormal termination of userapplications * Work around for a Bug in windows wave driver installer SP3 or higher implemented (Installer overrides existing wave drivers) * Work around for a Bug in windows wave driver uninstaller SP5 or higher implemented (Uninstall failed) Version 2.03: * The "Setting Panel" moved to the main window of the ARC88 Manager (previous ARC88 Mixer) * Driver problems after an unsuccessful initialization of the card(s) solved. * Driver problems belonging to the start/stop synchronization and sample rate conflicts while running multiple sound applications solved * Problems with the Stop-Function of some MPEG Players solved. Version 1.0: * Now you can NOT reach the ARC88 Mixer via Control Panel. You can find an appropriate icon at the Windows Taskbar. Use a double click at this icon to start the ARC88 mixer. * The ARC88 now can be used with Windows NT accounts without administrator rights. * In conjuction with some special PCI BIOS's we had the problem of "System Freezing" after the driver installation and a Windows Restart. Now this problem is solved. But: the driver can NOT support IRQ sharing in such a case. If an IRQ conflict occurs, the driver will state this by an error message like "IRQ could not be occupied". ------------------------------------------ 4. Attention: Windows System Sounds ------------------------------------------ * After the first installtion of an audio device driver, Windows NT switchs on the Windows System Sounds per default. The system will playback these sound if a message box appears or a windows will be minimized or maxminized. The use of this system sounds may cause some problems in conjuction with running audio applications. * Per default the driver takes care of a synchron start and stop of all analog devices of the ARC88. This is a really important feature for each multichannel harddiskrecording program but it may cause conflicts with the windows system sounds. If a running playback- or recording session will be interrupted by a system sound (because of a message box or window actions) the playback- or recording session will STOP too and the related audio application will hang (under specially circumstances) in a undefined state . You can solve this behavior by switching off the system sounds (Control Panel->System Sounds) or by deactivating the Start/Stop Synchronization Option of the ARC88 driver. (Control Panel->Multimedia->Devices->Arc88...->Properties->Settings) Leipzig 07-18-00