3rd party sound card and LV compatability

[DavidT]

Hello everyone, 
I need some information regarding sound cards and labview. I wish to initially do some sound recordings to a wav file using a 3rd party sound card and not use the onboard sound card.

I have been unable to find a suitable answer to determine what types of sound cards are compatible with LV. I understand that ASIO is the new preferred protocol but all threads ive seen indicate that i would need to build my own ASIO drivers, something im not keen to do. What type of sound card should i be looking for to be able to use the inbuilt LV sound vi's.

Would the Sound and Vib Suite be better suited and allow me to use any card? Or am i stuck with either building my own drivers or using an NI sound card? 

Regards,
David 

[Coq_Rouge]

I guess you use windows. For your 3. party sound card. You must install the accompanying driver. And then you can use it with Labview sound system. Labview is shipped with a lot sound examples. Goto help in the toolbar, than find examples and search for sound. You do not need anything else than Labview base and sound card to get started. Post again if you get stuck

[rolfk · Accepted solution]

It really depends what you are after. If you want ultimate control of your sound card you would most likely need to go the ASIO route. LabVIEW has interfaces to the Microsoft DirectSound API and you should be able to control most sound hardware through that API, but DirectSound was designed with the idea and requirements of games and simple audio applications, not professional audio studio or measurement goals. Also the LabVIEW sound VIs do not cover every possible aspect of the DirectSound API.

This could mean that use of your professional audio hardware from within LabVIEW may be limited or maybe even impossible without a real ASIO interface, since I believe that the real high end professional hardware doesn't always come with DirectSound support.

Message Edited by rolfk on 05-14-2010 10:51 AM

[Coq_Rouge]

The Labview sound system works best then sound are read I chunks with not to many updates pr second. If you plan to only stream sound to a wav file then the Labview sound system will do the job. Then you stress the Labview sound system it will very quickly fail. To be honest NI could have done a much much better job with the sound system. But they are not interested in doing so. I sometimes use this system. http://www.zeitnitz.de/Christian/waveio?PHPSESSID=mta6laff2tfeik2mtc37329uj5 It is much better than the Labview sound system. But built on the same windows API as Labview use.

[DavidT]

Thanks guys, managed to get it working. Fixed it by getting the right windows drivers and followed the solution of this thread http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&message.id=312648&requireLogin=False