Problems with sound + E-Prime 2 + Vista?

[David McFarlane]

Dear All,

We are trying to play sounds with E-Prime 2 (Pro or non-Pro). We
have problems doing this on all our Vista machines, anything from
excessive onset delays (many seconds) to "sound timed out" errors
that crash the experiment. The same programs run flawlessly with EP2 under XP.

So I just want to take a little survey to find out whether we are alone:

1) Does anybody else play sounds with EP2 (either Pro or non-Pro)
under Vista? (This does not include sounds played as part of a movie/video.)

2) When you do, do you ever get errors during the run?

3) What sort of onset delays do you get before the sounds play?

If you reply directly to me I will summarize and post results for the
group. Thank you.

---
David McFarlane, Systems Designer
Dept. Psychology, Michigan State University
mcfa...@msu.edu www.msu.edu/~mcfarla9
Voice: (517) 353-0799 Fax: (517) 353-1652

[David McFarlane]

As promised, here are the results of the survey that I started on 8
May 2008. I received only one reply. That reply reported the same
problems that we have (long onset delays and program crashes when
playing sounds with EP2 under Vista).

In addition, on the PST Forum I found 3 reports of simlar problems
playing sounds with EP2 (but those did not report whether they used
XP or Vista so I am not sure how to score them). Most importantly,
tests at PST now confirm that playing sounds with EP2 under Vista can
result in long onset delays and program crashes.

I ran additional tests playing sounds with good old EP1 under Vista,
and found that this worked well. Sounds also worked well with EP2
under XP. So the problem seems limited to playing sounds with EP2 under Vista.

I would really like to balance this with some success stories, but
outside of PST itself I have no reports of success playing sounds
with EP2 under Vista. So if you have success please send in a report.

Otherwise, it seems pretty well established that sounds do not work
well with EP2 and Vista. Until somebody finds a solution to this, if
we want to play sounds with E-Prime we will have to either stick to
good old EP1, or stick to Windows XP instead of Vista.

-- David McFarlane, Systems Designer