Is it possible to output MAME and Jukebox sounds to seperate speaker sets?

[KingKholera]

I'd love to be able to run MAME games and listen to the Jukebox at the same time, but this causes a distorted sound quality for both sounds. Is it possible to run GameEx game sounds through one set of speakers, and Jukebox music through another? IE. Have one sound card dedicated to MAME and another to Jukebox. I truly hope that such a feat is possible, as some hip 80's tunes are cool to hear when you're playing Donkey Kong.

P.S. Thanks to Tom for all the hard work. GameEx rules!

[chriss]

oh.. thats an awesome idea! at the moment i have the problem that when mame starts, the music quits which is totally alright... except we have a party goin on and nobody wants to hear the arcade sounds all the time...

just a thought.... if you configure media player in the device properties to use a certain sound card and then select a different one as standard device then gameex should output the arcade sounds to the standard audio device and the music with wmp... the only problem is that gameex usually quits the music when an emulator is turned on...

[KingKholera]

^ Actually, there's a GameEx setting to continue playing music while Mame games are played, and if GameEx plays sound using WMP as an independent source, then that might be possible. Do you think that this could be done with one dedicated sound card and one on-board sound card?

[chriss]

true... i remember seeing a setting like this!

well, as far as i know gameex is using wmp for audio and video playback... so it could be worth a try to change the output to a dedicated sound card and e.g. leave the arcade sounds to the onboard card (or vice versa... whatever)

i will try this tomorrow... except somebody hops in and tells me its all bollocks i'm telling you

cheers,

chriss

^ Actually, there's a GameEx setting to continue playing music while Mame games are played, and if GameEx plays sound using WMP as an independent source, then that might be possible. Do you think that this could be done with one dedicated sound card and one on-board sound card?

[KingKholera]

^ Thanks for giving it a shot. If it works, please be sure to provide a short write-up of how you set it up.

[headkaze]

There are a few ways to do this, first is using a sound patch I updated for Mame although I don't know if it will work with the latest Mame as it was updated for 121 but it might work. The patch allows you to specify which soundcard Mame uses.

Another way is to use a program like Quick Sound Switch which can use the command line to change the primary sound card. You would set that before you run Mame or some other emulator using LaunchBefore. Only problem is I don't think you can have a LaunchBefore for Mame so the patch might be the only way. I'm also not sure if the program changing primary sound card will mess with GameEx's jukebox already playing or not. So the patch sounds like a more promising idea at the moment.

For more info on these techniques check out this thread over on BYOAC.

[chriss]

perfect solution!

I was just reading the thread and i would like to know.... is it possible to change the settings myself? could you maybe point out which files and which code has to be altered (like for the mame nag screens) or is this too much things as to put it into a post?

[KingKholera]

I see from that thread that Winamp supports selection of sound card output. Is it possible to have GameEx recognize and use Winamp for audio? That would seem to make the whole issue much easier. If not, I can try and set up Winamp separately and set my arcade buttons to shift through the tracks.