How do you use your sound card and sound VI to get sound levels off a microphone.

[s.pollak]

We are using LabVIEW 5.0 and we want to capture sound from a microphone. Is the sound VI and a sound card enough to do it, or do you have to get more materials.

[Labviewguru]

If you are in Microsoft Windows platform, you can just record the sound with the sound recording feature of windows.

You can do the same with LabVIEW, but it actually a little more difficult, though you do have more flexibility.

Try looking at your sound examples included with LabVIEW. There should be a few examples on how to acquire audio that may be exactly what you are looking for (always look at the examples, they cover the gammit of LabVIEW capabilities and are a great way to solve something to which the answer is not immediately availabe. I don't know of any other software package out there that provides this kind of sample program database.)

[BruceAmmons]

If you are just trying to measure relative sound levels or record sound for playback, the standard PC sound card is adequate. If you want to calibrate your measurements against a known standard and have accurate measurements over a wide range of frequencies, then you need something better. In that case, I would go with an NI DSA board and a high quality ICP microphone from The Modal Shop.

Bruce

[PdB]

Some years ago my company designed, build and sold an 8x2 analog audio line mixer that could be controlled via the RS-232 serial port by software.
The software was developed in LabVIEW and we called it the Mix It MXC.
This should explain to you that when you say/think sound, you do not immidiately have to think of a PC-based sound-card solution. Even though it comes free with every computer-hardware you buy.