Music II

"Sound card aready in use by another application"

Aye. And there's the rub.

You see, I managed to get the modern creative soundcard (an Xfi something or other) to play stuff. I found the lead that connected it to my speakers. I installed all the music software that came with the MIDI controller. This time around, I read the instructions, and did things in a different order. And so I have a much bigger range of sounds available to the guitar than I did last time, although there is a huge bank of sounds called Sample Tank that I have not yet managed to integrate.

I can play my guitar using the midi pickup. I cannot play it and record what I am playing, which means I cannot multitrack. I just can't record, full stop. It may be that I could connect the guitar to the microphone socket and record from there, but that's not what I'm after here. It seems the soundcard is not full duplex. Full duplex and half duplex are the difference between a dual carriageway and a single track road.

I installed all the software onto the Windows 8 partition. The first option I have is to make a hardware change. Remove the soundcard, plug the speakers into the onboard sound connections, and see if that will allow me to play and record simultaneously.

If that doesn't take me forward, the next thing to try is to use the windows 7 partition, and make a hardware change - unplug the Xfi soundcard, plug in the audigy 2 card, which should be full duplex, but which will only work on windows 7, and not on windows 8; make sure I have sound output to the speakers, and if so, reinstall the software onto the windows 7 partition.

If that too fails to take me to where I want to be, then we're looking at shelling out on another sound card. If so, it should have full duplex, and some form of hard wired ASIO capability. Whether some PCI internal card or an external USB card doesn't matter too much.


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