Issue with .ebs2 file and sounds on Windows 7 with High Definition Audio Device as audio driver

[Adam Liter]

I'm building an E-Prime experiment using E-Prime version 2.0.10.242.

The computer that I'm building this experiment on is an old computer running Windows XP. On this computer, when I try running the .ebs2 file, everything works perfectly. The audio driver on this computer is SB Live! 24-Bit.

However, when I try running the .ebs2 file on a computer running Windows 7 with the High Definition Audio Device as the audio driver, I get an error:

The following runtime error occurred:

Unable to load sound 203 - please view the AudioReport in your experiment folder

Line: 646
Error Number: 1234

However, the exact same file works perfectly on a Windows 7 machine with the Realtek Audio HD Driver.

I've also tried building the .es2 file from the newest version of E-Prime, version 2.0.10.353. Yet this .ebs2 file also does not work on a Windows 7 machine with the High Definition Audio Device as audio driver, either.

I assume the audio driver is the issue, as the .ebs2 file works perfectly on another Windows 7 machine with a different audio driver.

Does anyone know of any way around this issue? Or, if you don't think it's the audio driver that is the issue, does anyone know what else could possibly be going on?

I work in a lab on a university campus, and all the computers in our labs on campus are managed by our IT department. The software on every machine on campus all comes from the same image, and I have no ability to change the OS or the audio driver.

Ultimately, then, those are the machines that we have to test on. Does anyone know if there is a possible solution to this issue, given that I have to run the actual experiment on these machines?

[David McFarlane]

Adam,

Hmm, I do not know what to say about the "High Definition Audio
Device". What sound API do you use for your .es2 file? On my
EP2.0.10.242/353 installations, if I open the Experiment Object
properties, go to the Devices tab, and open the Sound device, under
API I find ASIO, Chronos, CoreAudio, and DirectSound as options, with
DirectSound as the default. In my own tests using a Black Box
Toolkit on one Windows 7 64-bit machine running EP2.0.10.242, I got
the best performance using the CoreAudio API -- I measured latencies
of 7.25-12.25 ms from OnsetTime to actual sound delivery (as compared
to the same machine booted to Windows XP 32-bit and using the
DirectSound API with EP2.0.10.242, where I measured latencies of
31.25-33.75 ms). More to your point, the sound worked. But as I
said, I do not know what to say about the "High Definition Audio Device".

So I hope someone else can help here. You might best take this to
PST Support (see below) -- in particular, they might be able to
interpret that AudioReport file.

Best,
-----
David McFarlane
E-Prime training
online: http://psychology.msu.edu/Workshops_Courses/eprime.aspx
Twitter: @EPrimeMaster (https://twitter.com/EPrimeMaster )

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[David McFarlane]

Adam,

Come to think of it, you might look at your sound codecs. Try running
the Codec Config and Sound Tester utilities on your subject running
stations, using your sound files.

If your subject running stations do not have the codec to run your sound
files, then you will either have to add the codec to those computers, or
redo your sound files to use a codec that those computers already have.

Regards,
-- David McFarlane