************************************************************************* Important Hints to the Arc88 driver version 1.10 for Windows 2000/XP ************************************************************************* 1. System Requirements 2. Installation 3. What's new 4. What's to do 5. Attention: Windows System Sounds ------------------------------------------ 1. System Requirements ------------------------------------------ * Windows 2000 SP1 or Windows XP ----------------------------------------- 2. Installation ----------------------------------------- * Ensure that you are logged on with administrator rights at Windows NT * Update: First remove an older Arc88 driver by use of the device manager of Windows 2000/XP. Then force the device manager to search for new hardware or restart your computer. In this case logon at Windows 2000/XP as an administrator again. * Follow the instructions of the Windows 2000/XP hardware assistant. Choose the folder where you have copied the driver before as path to the device drivers. * In some cases (update and installation of multiple cards) Windows 2000/XP 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. What's new ------------------------------------------ Version 1.10: * This version is compatible to MS Windows XP * Possible difficulties during the AD/DA initialization removed * "First Playback Start is at 44.1 kHz"-problem solved * MME Interface: synchronous buffer return improved Version 1.0 to NT4 Version 2.12 * "Plug and Play" Support * Support of the Windows 2000/XP computer configurations: - ACPI Multiprozessor PC - ACPI PC - ACPI Uniprozessor PC - MPS Multiprozessor PC - MPS Uniprozessor PC - Standard PC * ASIO 2.0 Support NT4 Version 2.12 * 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 Manager. * The "Setting Panel" moved to the main window of the ARC88 Manager (previous ARC88 Mixer) * DirectSound Support (see Arc88 Manager - Settings - DirectSound) * Important DirectSound Option "Restrict Playback Format" implemented: (see Manager - Settings - DirectSound) In interaction of some DirectSound Applications and the DirectX System it may occur, that the hardware driver is used with another sample format by DirectX that requested by the application. A realtime sample format converting is the consequence. This may have a negative influence to the sound quality and the overall system performance. So, if you get the impressiom that it didn't sounds like you expect (like a bad format converting), please close your application, open the Arc88 Manager and set the sample format you need in "Settings - DirectSound - Restrict Playback Format". This setting forces the DirectX System to use the hardware driver with this sample format only. Therefore a realtime format converting by DirectX will not happen. But, if an application uses another sample format than you have set, the realtime format converting of DirectX will be done again. * 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) NT4 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. NT4 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. What's to do ------------------------------------------ * WDM Kernel implementation to support DirectSound and WDM based applications * ACPI power management functions ------------------------------------------ 5. Attention: Windows System Sounds ------------------------------------------ * After the first installtion of an audio device driver, Windows 2000/XP 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. (Taskbar->Arc88 Icon Doubleclick->Settings) . Leipzig 04-16-02