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A CMedia USB multichannel soundcard is an affordable way to provide a DAC interface to your laser show system. All the information you need to wire up such a soundcard can be found in ElectroFreak's sticky. Such soundcards can be used with laser show software that employs the EZAudDAC interface, which sends position and laser color/intensity data as audio signals.
The aforementioned tutorial notes that such soundcards should only be used with Windows XP 32-bit, or Linux. However, as you'll see below, you can actually use a USB DAC with Windows 7, and it's actually somewhat easier because you don't need to install new drivers.
1) First plug your USB soundcard into your computer. CMedia soundcards are ubiquitous, and Microsoft includes generic soundcard drivers for such cards. Allow Windows to install the default soundcard drivers for your card. Windows told me a "USB Composite Device" was installed successfully when it finished.
2) Now open up the Sound settings from your Control Panel.
3) As is, Windows will treat your sound card as a generic stereo soundcard, and perform crossfeeding between channels, resulting in signals being mixed. This end result for your laser is that your position signals will affect each other causing double-imaging and poor positioning. We need to set our speakers as full channel speakers, with full dynamic range.
3.a) First ensure that your speakers are set to their fullest surround sound capability, in my case, 7.1 surround sound. This ensures that all signals are separated to the outputs:
3.b) Enable all optional speakers in the next dialog. Following that is an important dialog, "Select full-range speakers." The full-range setting will ensure that no crossfeeding occurs between channels.
Select all speakers as full-range and you should be good to go.
Now that you have your soundcard set up, a program like LFI that allows EZAudDAC will work with your soundcard on Windows 7.
Troubleshooting
Sometimes the drivers that come with your computer will not allow you to use all channels of your sound card, even after you've changed the speaker configuration.
A known working Cmedia driver for Windows 7 can be downloaded here:
CMedia CM106 Windows 7 drivers (x86 and x64)
If you don't trust the above drivers, the original source of the above driver is from Microsoft's driver database.
Extract the driver archive to a temporary folder. With the USB sound-card plugged in, update your driver by opening your Device Manager (Start -> Control Panel -> Device Manager), and right-clicking your USB sound-card device to update the drivers.
In the dialog that opens, choose "Browse my computer for driver software" and hit Next. Then in the following dialog, fill in or browse for the path of the folder where you extracted the driver archive, and hit Next. The drivers should be updated with the new driver set.
The aforementioned tutorial notes that such soundcards should only be used with Windows XP 32-bit, or Linux. However, as you'll see below, you can actually use a USB DAC with Windows 7, and it's actually somewhat easier because you don't need to install new drivers.
1) First plug your USB soundcard into your computer. CMedia soundcards are ubiquitous, and Microsoft includes generic soundcard drivers for such cards. Allow Windows to install the default soundcard drivers for your card. Windows told me a "USB Composite Device" was installed successfully when it finished.
2) Now open up the Sound settings from your Control Panel.
3) As is, Windows will treat your sound card as a generic stereo soundcard, and perform crossfeeding between channels, resulting in signals being mixed. This end result for your laser is that your position signals will affect each other causing double-imaging and poor positioning. We need to set our speakers as full channel speakers, with full dynamic range.
3.a) First ensure that your speakers are set to their fullest surround sound capability, in my case, 7.1 surround sound. This ensures that all signals are separated to the outputs:
3.b) Enable all optional speakers in the next dialog. Following that is an important dialog, "Select full-range speakers." The full-range setting will ensure that no crossfeeding occurs between channels.
Select all speakers as full-range and you should be good to go.
Now that you have your soundcard set up, a program like LFI that allows EZAudDAC will work with your soundcard on Windows 7.
Troubleshooting
Sometimes the drivers that come with your computer will not allow you to use all channels of your sound card, even after you've changed the speaker configuration.
A known working Cmedia driver for Windows 7 can be downloaded here:
CMedia CM106 Windows 7 drivers (x86 and x64)
If you don't trust the above drivers, the original source of the above driver is from Microsoft's driver database.
Extract the driver archive to a temporary folder. With the USB sound-card plugged in, update your driver by opening your Device Manager (Start -> Control Panel -> Device Manager), and right-clicking your USB sound-card device to update the drivers.
In the dialog that opens, choose "Browse my computer for driver software" and hit Next. Then in the following dialog, fill in or browse for the path of the folder where you extracted the driver archive, and hit Next. The drivers should be updated with the new driver set.
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