Do matrix O displays need plugins to show EQ for pc sound?

[looking for a good equali]

sounds great

"Give me some of your requirements and I'll look into it this weekend and see how long it'd take me to put somethign together." <-well... that might just be another problem cause I use an EMU 1820M which is kinda noturious for its poor WDM drivers... "Open up your volume control and under record choose "what you hear" or "stereo mix"" <- I cant choose anything in the windows mixer-recording section - my 1820M has its own software/mixer which normally controls those functions...

I'll check out those last links u've sent

[Jon]

I use an EMU 1820M which is kinda noturious for its poor WDM drivers...

Well as long as everything gets enumerated in DirectSound there shouldn't be a problem. But if your saying that you can't see all the controls in windows "Volume Control" then we may have run into a snag before it even got started.

Your reminding me of the ATI drivers I had for my TV WONDER VE basically it would only work in the ATI program that came with the card. But I eventually found some decent drivers that would let me use it to capture in any program.

Haha hopefully it won't come down to crappy drivers.

[looking for a good equali]

im afraid it very well might end with driver problems... I've had trouble using stream-recording programs (I like to sample old movies and such stuff - I have a tv-card). Actually my trouble would qualifi as being more than trouble cause I cant really get any streamrecording programs to work... The anwser might be sending the signal from the wave channel/line (the main channel which all sound runs through) to an ASIO channel. That should work but it doesnt ... I've had lots of trouble with that... hmmm...writing this gives me an Idea: do u think u could somehow write the code to make the display react to the soundsstream from an ASIO channel? - that way I could send the wave-channel sound to an ASIO channel and the display would then react to all sound - just like I want it to... that would b sweet

[looking for a good equali]

"That should work but it doesnt ... I've had lots of trouble with that" <- only had trouble recording from the channel - the sound ran through it like it should so it should work

[looking for a good equali]

o..btw.. Is there anyway to use those 3 LEDS without any other hardware? - without the display

*edit - just erad this :"Edit #2: The LED's wouldn't work with the indicator that was in the article. I didn't notice any GPO's on it, so far that feature is unique to the MO displays." <-guess that means no

[Jon]

Well I've found a couple demo projects at The Code Project.

This Spectrum Analyzer code should be able to form the foundation of the project. It has a EQ, Spectrum, peak, Micro EQ, Oscilloscope and a PixelGram. Once integrated with this Mixer code, it would make the program a bit more user friendly. There's also another Spectrum/Bar Histogram project on there that'll give another way of drawing the spectrum analyzer.

I haven't tested any of these projects yet, and the first one is in C++ so I'll take a look at them over this next week and play around to see if I can get a demo for you to give a try on your comptuer to see if it'll give you a EQ, and then from there I'll integrate the LCD code.

[looking for a good equali]

ok... I'd really love it if u could manage to work out an oscilloscope as well as the EQ... that would b great! Im looking forward to hear from you...

[Jon]

The only problem with the library code is that it's written in C++ so I may have to port it over to .NET. But I may not do that right away, hopefully I can just get it to work first.

I've had a bit of experiance porting these types of library's so i think it's doable, but the time frame depends on the complexity of everything involved and how many snags I have to debug...

An oscilloscope would only have around 4 levels of acuracy, if you get what I'm trying to say.


The custom characters would look like this (each asterisk is a lit pixel).
1_______ 2_______ 3_______ 4
|*****| |*****| |*****| |*****|
|______| |*****| |*****| |*****|
|______| |*****| |*****| |*****|
|______| |______| |*****| |*****|
|______| |______| |*****| |*****|
|______| |______| |______| |*****|
|______| |______| |______| |*****|
|______| |______| |______| |*****|

5_______ 6_______ 7_______ 8
|______| |______| |______| |*****|
|______| |______| |______| |*****|
|______| |______| |*****| |*****|
|______| |______| |*****| |*****|
|______| |______| |*****| |*****|
|______| |*****| |*****| |*****|
|______| |*****| |*****| |*****|
|*****| |*****| |*****| |*****|


You can create up to 8 custom characters, each of them are 5 x 8 in size

For a Regular EQ they look like this for a normal eq.

1_______ 2_______ 3_______ 4
|______| |______| |______| |______|
|______| |______| |______| |______|
|______| |______| |______| |______|
|______| |______| |______| |______|
|______| |______| |______| |*****|
|______| |______| |*****| |*****|
|______| |*****| |*****| |*****|
|*****| |*****| |*****| |*****|

5_______ 6_______ 7_______ 8
|______| |______| |______| |*****|
|______| |______| |*****| |*****|
|______| |*****| |*****| |*****|
|*****| |*****| |*****| |*****|
|*****| |*****| |*****| |*****|
|*****| |*****| |*****| |*****|
|*****| |*****| |*****| |*****|
|*****| |*****| |*****| |*****|

To create taller bars you just stack them ontop of each other like this:
8
|______| |______| |______| |______|
|______| |______| |______| |______|
|______| |*****| |______| |______|
|______| |*****| |______| |*****|
|______| |*****| |______| |*****|
|______| |*****| |*****| |*****|
|______| |*****| |*****| |*****|
|*****| |*****| |*****| |*****|

|*****| |*****| |*****| |*****|
|*****| |*****| |*****| |*****|
|*****| |*****| |*****| |*****|
|*****| |*****| |*****| |*****|
|*****| |*****| |*****| |*****|
|*****| |*****| |*****| |*****|
|*****| |*****| |*****| |*****|
|*****| |*****| |*****| |*****|

This way there is still only 8 custom characters but you can use both rows for the EQ.

You can also do thin bars which look good as well... To create a custom character check out the manual, to use a custom character you just reference it by its ref number that you created when you saved it, so for this example you would just send 1 and you would get the first custom character displayed.

[looking for a good equali]

so what ur saying is that the eq will only have 8 bars (rows) at maximum, olike this:

- - - -
- - - - - - -
- - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - -

I as hoping the EQ would work just like the eq works with winamp (when title and othe info is disabled - so its only the eq thats shown - full EQ)

[Jon]

Alphanumeric display's such as the MX620 make use of rows and columns to display data. The MX620 for example is a 20 character by 2 line display. Each of these characters are comprised by pixels, five wide by eight tall. Alphanumeric display's come with a built in character set, that define all of the characters that you can display on it.

However a unique feature of our display's is that we allow the creation of 8 custom characters that can be displayed on our alphanumeric displays. This allows for programmers to use these characters in creative ways to do things that otherwise would not be possible. If you browse through our alphanumeric displays, every time that you see what looks like a graphic, what your actually seeing is custom characters aranged to give the apearance of a graphic.

So this does make a spectrum analyzer possible on an alphanumeric display. If you have a 2 line display you have the possibility of to 16 levels up from the bottom . That is because each line is 8 pixels tall and there are two lines.(a 20x4 has 32) But for an ocilliscope you need to be able to have custom characters for the positive levels (going up), and custom characters for the negative levels (going down). Because these require different custom characters you can only build have 4 levels per line positive, and 4 levels per line negative. Which would make an oscilliscope on a 20x2 alphanumeric display a really cool effect, but it wouldn't give very much detail towards the sound waveforms.

This is different than a graphical display such as the GLK24064-25. Graphic display's do not come with a built in character set, they instead use a user definable font. Graphic display's also allow you to draw either individual pixels, or entire bitmaps. The GLK24064-25 is 64 pixels tall and 240 pixels wide, which would allow for an oscilliscope that hade 32 positive levels, and 32 negative levels.

EDIT: I created a picture that would give you an example of what the oscilliscope and EQ would look like on a 20x2 but I can't seem to attach it. Send me an email at jklassen@matrixorbital.ca and I will email it to you.

[looking for a good equali]

hi Jonathan

I dont see any attachment :/ ? It may b bcause im a noob at gmail - but I dont think so... "moked up" mean something like fixed up right? I wont b using the oscilliscope on the display to analyze sound deeply so it doesnt matter if its not gonna look perfect... Any progress on the EQ - I wanna buy the display so bad! (but I need to know that an EQ for all sound would b possible first) - U did see that I mentioned the possibility of reading a soundsignal rfom an ASIO channel right? Im thinking that might b easier than fiddeling with windows mixer code (especially if your trying to work out an universal solution that would work with all sound cards - not just the most common ones). Well... your the expert - im just guessing

again thx for all your efforts - I never expected anyone to do even half the work u've already done - its very much appriciated!

[Jon]

hey the workaround that Nick proposed should do the trick for the mean time, I've been wanting to learn DirectSound for a while so this will save you from waiting around for me.

Check this out:

http://www.lcdforums.com/forums/viewtop ... 7002#17002

That's all for now folks....

[looking for a good equali]

hey thats great... only it doesnt work for me (yet) - i've tested the linein feature for winamp - no response to any sound... I think the problem is that I have 6 line in's so there is no specific line to read from - also the drivers have been miscredited alot on several websites so theres properbly something to it... Do you think perhaps that there is a ://ASIO1 command or something? I would prefer reading the stream from an ASIO channel...

thx for all your help - I'll be fiddeling with this for a while and hopefully get it to work

Also - where can I buy this display? Only in US + Canada? I cant buy it in any shop in Denmark

Also - what ever happened to that canadian guy selling weed-seeds? XD - I never heard how that case turned out - the US was pretty hot for nailing him under US laws (those bastards)

[Jon]

Sorry about that, the nullsoft linein plugin is only available on the full version, but don't worry it's still free, but you will have to reinstall winamp to get it, I searched through their plugins page for a while, and they only have a third party plugin, and you'll want the nullsoft one.

But make sure that when you install it you are carefull in the choose Install options section, so that you you only install what you want.

I've updated the instructions with this:

----

1. Download and install Winamp Basic, be sure to install the full version, in order to get the linein plugin.

NOTE: When installing ensure that the "Extra Audio Output/Effect Support" -> "Line Input Support" checkbox is checked. You may remove other options to suit your preference. Most notibly on the "Choose Install Options " screen you may want to unclick the "eMusic Icon and Offer for 50 Free MP3s!" and "Get Active Security Monitor - it's FREE!" options.

----

You will have to pick the line that you want to display the eq for in the recording section of the windows volume control. For me I picked the "Stereo Mix" option, but your sound card may be different.

On to the distributor problem. We're still a relatively small company on the international stage, but we are growing fast. Antratek is our only registered distributor in the Netherlands. So you may want to check in with them.

Here is a list of distributors.

[looking for a good equali]

yea... mine is very different - I only see 1 channelstrip - and its unactive (cant be changed)... Im gonna try doing what u said anyway - mayby I'll get it to work somehow... I'll get back to you on my progress