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FrozenGate by Avery

Sound card DAC tutorial

Re: New revised sound card DAC

Just a question... if i dont need ILDA suport right now, cant i just use two correction amp circuits and pass the other ones directly to the analog drivers, setting them instead to do 100% at whatever-volts-the-soundcard-output-is?
 





Re: New revised sound card DAC

If you are using drivers that allow you full control over what their max voltage is, then yes. I still recommend using the correction amp for modulation since it provides th standard 5V if you ever want to use commercially made lasers..
 
Re: New revised sound card DAC

*BUMP* The tutorial has been updated with detailed tuning instructions courtesy of DrLava!
 
I somehow missed this, but putting the tuning instructions in here is a good idea :)
 
James_Lehman said:


BTW I made countless posts on the PL with lots of pictures a long time ago about how to do all of this stuff.

James. :)
Click to expand...


That's the very reason why I compiled this tutorial (with drlava's input) here and on PL. It is more helpful and easy to find if all relevant information pertaining to the construction of a soundcard DAC can all be found in one thread.

Regarding Laserboy, it is a very capable program with no emphasis on user friendliness whatsoever. If you take the most capable program in the world and make it difficult to use, you rob it of some of it's universal appeal.. it becomes something that only advanced users or people willing to put forth the effort are able to use.. therefore I do not feel comfortable recommending it to new people as an easy-to-use program for creating laser shows when compared directly to the other software options. That's just honesty, though. I'm not one to bend the truth on account of a third party.. (To be fair, I haven't tried to use Laserboy in quite some time, so the more recent revisions may be easier to use..)

The bottom line is that people are free to use any or all of the available options in terms of software and hardware when building and using a soundcard DAC. There are many ways to build it, and several good software options for running it. This tutorial is only for constructing the most common version of the soundcard DAC using drlavas "laserboy" correction amp and a specific sound card based on the CM106 or CM6206 chips. It can be constructed in several other ways using ANY 5.1ch sound card and the proper op-amp buffer circuits if one has the inclination.

I will add links to Laserboy software download and forum..
 
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when tuning the soundcard, i dont understand what the max.wav file is for. when i download it, and click play, a window pops up that says it encountered a problem while playing the file.
 
carmangary said:
That isn't good. You should be able to play it even with a normal media player.

Anyway, the purpose of the file is to output a signal that you can use for calibration. I don't know what the output of it looks like but it is probably cycling between min and max so you would set your voltmeter on the outputs and then tweak the pots on the sound card DAC until you see the correct voltage on your voltmeter.
Click to expand...

I was able to tune the correction amp even without the file. Is that okay?
 
hi, are you saying i should play the spider file and play a frame from laser boy at the same time to see if i can get 5 volts for the offset pots?
 
hey i was reading your thread and i was pondering if this dac could be ttl because i have a FireMyLaser driver and a whole rgv set up. and i was planning on making scanner but i had to know?
 
Any system that can handle analog can also handle TTL by default. Analog systems can supply anywhere between 0 and 5V, which would by default include TTL. TTL is just a 0-5V square wave.
 
What you want to do is set your lasershow software to TTL, if such a thing is possible.
 
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