RME Audio HDSPe MADI, User Manual

Page: 18 / 72

18
User's Guide HDSPe MADI
© RME
12. Operation and Usage
12.1 Playback
The HDSP system can play back audio data in supported formats only (sample rate, bit resolu-
tion). Otherwise an error message appears (for example at 22 kHz and 8 bit).
In the audio application being used, HDSP must be selected as output device. This can often be
found in the
Options, Preferences or Settings menus under Playback Device, Audio Devices,
Audio etc.
We strongly recommend switching off all system sounds (via >
Control Panel /Sounds <). Also
HDSPe should not be the Preferred Device for playback, as this could cause loss of synchroni-
zation and unwanted noises. If you feel you cannot do without system sounds, you should use
on-board sound or any cheap sound card and select this one as
Preferred Device in > Control
Panel /Multimedia /Audio < or > Control Panel /Sound /Playback <.
The screenshot to the
right shows a typical
configuration dialog as
displayed by a (stereo)
wave editor. After
selecting one of the 32
playback devices,
audio data is sent to the
according audio chan-
nels.
Increasing the number
and/or size of audio
buffers may prevent the
audio signal from
breaking up, but also
increases latency i.e.
output is delayed. For
synchronized playback
of audio and MIDI (or
similar), be sure to activate the checkbox ‘Get position from audio driver’.
The HDSPe MADI allows sample rates of up to 192 kHz via MADI. In this mode, only channels
1 to 16 are available.
Note on Windows Vista/7:
Since Vista the audio application can no longer control the sample rate under WDM. Instead the
user has to work himself through numerous settings (up to 32 with a MADI card!), and to set the
sample rate to the exact same value per stereo device.
Therefore the driver of the HDSPe MADI includes a workaround: the sample rate can be set
globally for all WDM devices within the Settings dialog, see chapter 11.1.