Third Party Sound Card/Audio Interface in OS X?

[foxgriffith]

I would like to use an external audio interface in LabVIEW, and was not able to pull it up in the devices under the "aquire sound" or "play waveform" VIs. The device I have tried to use is a PreSonus AudioBox, which provides Phantom for a measurement mic I'm trying to use. The built in sound card shows up just fine but third party cards do not seem to. After much searching I could not find much information on sound card support for LabVIEW in OS X, would anyone be able to shed some light on this?

[G-Money]

foxgriffith,

          Does the third-party card work otherwise? I don't know what it is on a Mac but I would open Device Manager on Windows to make sure that the driver was installed and that the card is listed. What Device ID are you passing into these VIs? They are set to 0 by default for your default card but if you only have one extra card then it should be 1. Do these VIs work with the default card? I just want to make sure that the VIs do work on a Mac first and then we can start to figure out if it is a hardware issue with the card (driver installed properly and can use it otherwise) or a software one (just configuring the VIs incorrectly). Let me know and if you get any errors then post a picture.  

[foxgriffith]

Grant,

The external device is installed and works with other audio programs, such as Garageband, and shows up in the OS X system control panel. When opening the Aquire Sound or Play Waveform VI and selecting a device the default card appears and works, the external audio device does not appear in the pull down menu.

The sound card assumes Apple's Core Audio is used by the audio program, I could see this being a problem if LabVIEW does not. If this is the case how does LabVIEW communicate with the sound card?

Thank you for your time,

Rob

[G-Money]

Rob,

          The sound VIs (http://zone.ni.com/reference/en-XX/help/371361F-01/lvpict/soundvisnew/) look for compatible DirectX8 API on Windows and Open Sound System (OSS) on Linux. I can't find information about what we would look for on Mac for third party sound cards but technically if you can use it in other software, it shows up in the system control panel, and the Sound VIs that come with LabVIEW for Mac works then it should work. I am going to follow up on this question with our developers because our Mac test machines are in R&D. The one thing that I would say to try would be to just configure the Aquire Sound Express VI and the wire a 1 into the Device input in the top left corner and see what happens. Maybe the population list doesn't happen but we can still interact with the card. I will dig into this further and let you know what I find out today. 

[foxgriffith]

Grant,

First of all thank you for your help it's much appreciated.

I did see that they stated what Windows and Linux uses but not Mac which is interesting. Last night I decided to give play around with it a bit more so after confirming that OS X recognized it along with another audio application. I opened up a new VI added the Aquire Sound and placed a constant of 2 since the devices listed 0 and 1 were the input jack and the built in microphone. When I tried to run the VI I received an error stating "Selected Device is Invalid".

Rob

[G-Money]

Rob,

       I tried out the sound VIs on a Mac and the Device ID isn't being enumerated like the System Profiler shows. The Mac's System Profiler shows that the default device is Audio Device 8 and a hex code for Device ID which turns into like 25000 when it's converted to decimal (the input to the Aquire Sound VI is a U32 decimal and not hex) and I can't use those numbers to run the VI (I get the same error you were seeing earlier) but when I use 0 for the default then it works just fine. This tells me that the info that System Profiler is displaying for Device and Audio ID is not the same thing that should be used with the Sound VIs. I will have to talk this over with the developers and I just found out that tomorrow afternoon is the next time they will be available.

So I am better able to answer their questions, would you mind answering these questions below about your setup:

1) What version of OS X are you using (i.e. 10.5)?

2) What type of Mac do you have (i.e. Macbook Pro)?

3) Is the third party sound device the usb one or how is it plugged into your computer?

4) Could you post a screenshot of what the System Profiler says about the third-party sound device so I can see how it shows up?

5) What version of LabVIEW are you using?

Thanks! 

[foxgriffith]

Grant,

I certainly can provide you with that information.

I'm running:

1) Snow Leapord 10.6.2 (updates are current)

2) Macbook Pro 2.16 Ghz Intel Core Duo (Made in 2006)

3) The third party device is plugged in via USB and under the system profiler can be found under USB devices. From experiences it would be under the corresponding device, say if it were a PCI Express card, then you'd see it under PCI cards.

4) I've attached a photo of the system profiler's Sound Device data.

5) I am using LabVIEW 2009 Student Edition, purchased this term.

Thank you,

Rob

[G-Money]

Grant,

       I spoke with our LabVIEW developers and they had something to try. If you plug in the USB device and can use it in Garageband, and then restart your computer and reopen LabVIEW and those VIs, does the device list show it? They were wondering if the device list and LabVIEW wasn't recognizing the USB device because it updated it's own list of installed devices and restarting the computer and LabVIEW should do that. 

[foxgriffith]

Grant,

Restarting the computer and or LabVIEW does not seem to repopulate the audio device list with a new device. I also tried using the audio interface in a different program and then opening LabVIEW and then restarting, nothing seemed to help LabVIEW reconize the device.

Rob

[G-Money]

Rob,

          Thanks for testing that out. I will meet with the developers again to talk about the issue. I will post back as soon as I have more information (I will bring it up this afternoon so hopefully I have something soon). Again, I apologize for the inconvience and appreciate your patience while I kick a few tires trying to figure out what's going on.