User Manual

18
User's Guide HDSP AES-32 © RME
12. Operation and Usage
12.1 Playback
The HDSP system can play back audio data in supported formats only (sample rate, bit resolu-
tion). Otherwise an error message appears (for example at 22 kHz and 8 bit).
In the audio application being used, HDSP must be selected as output device. This can often be
found in the Options, Preferences or Settings menus under Playback Device, Audio Devices,
Audio etc.
We strongly recommend switching off all system sounds (via >Control Panel /Sounds<). Also
HDSP should not be the Preferred Device for playback, as this could cause loss of synchroniza-
tion and unwanted noises. If you feel you cannot do without system sounds, you should use on-
board sound or any cheap sound card and select this one as Preferred Device in >Control
Panel /Multimedia /Audio< or >Control Panel /Sound /Playback<.
The screenshot to the
right shows a typical
configuration dialog as
displayed by a (ste-
reo) wave editor. After
selecting one of the
eight stereo playback
devices, audio data is
sent to the according
audio channels.
Increasing the number
and/or size of audio
buffers may prevent
the audio signal from
breaking up, but also
increases latency i.e.
output is delayed. For
synchronized play-
back of audio and
MIDI (or similar), be sure to activate the checkbox ‘Get position from audio driver’.
Note on Windows Vista/7
:
Since Vista the audio application can no longer control the sample rate under WDM. Instead the
user has to work himself through numerous settings, and to set the sample rate to the same
value per stereo device.
Therefore the driver of the HDSP system includes a workaround: the sample rate can be set
globally for all WDM devices within the Settings dialog, see chapter 11.1.