Windows Audio Settings - ESI GIGAPORT eX User Manual

ESI GIGAPORT eX

3.3 Windows Audio Settings

Via the Windows Sound control panel icon or by selecting File > Windows Audio Settings in our
control panel software, you can open these Playback and Recording dialogs:
You can see that in the Playback section, there are 4 devices, one for each stereo channel (GIGAPORT
eX CH1&2, GIGAPORT eX CH3&4, GIGAPORT eX CH5&6 and GIGAPORT eX CH7&8). Each of
these so-called MME/WDM devices represent one channel pair for playback and by default these are
corresponding to the physical output channel with the same number. It can be useful to have these
separate devices available if you want to use multiple applications accessing different outputs of the
hardware simultaneously or if you use an application that allows you to select separate wave devices
for different functions.
The Playback section also contains a Speakers device from the GIGAPORT eX Audio driver, which
in many cases would or should be the selected default device. This device can be used for playback
with any channel count up to 8 channels. Some audio applications require you to select via Configure
> Speaker Setup, how many output channels you intend to use: Stereo (= 2 output channels),
Quadraphonic (= 4 output channels), 5.1 Surround (= 6 output channels), 6.1 Surround (= 7 output
channels) or 7.1 Surround (= 8 output channels). Select one of them to define how many channels
you want to be able to playback simultaneously (7.1 Surround is suggested).
Please note that any audio hardware that is installed in your computer already will also appear in the
Windows Sound control panel and you might need to choose which one you want to use by default
here (for instance for the Windows system sounds or the audio playback from your web browser). To
do that, select the entry in the list and then click Set Default.
Note that many (especially professional) audio applications have their own settings for the used
device and that audio applications that use the ASIO driver of GIGAPORT eX ignore these settings
since they have direct access to the hardware.
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