I want to send Winamp's output direct to my sound card - how?!
 

When I installed Winamp on my PC a while ago, I also installed some sort of third-party software add-on (plugin?) which routed the output of the player direct to my soundcard

This was ideal for me, because:

- I don't have a cable between my CD player and my soundcard....and

- advice suggests that the best way of playing CDs is to bypass that thin and nasty cable, sending music data straight through the PC to the sound card in a digital format, allowing the sound card's D-A conversion hardware to sort it out before outputting it to the speakers - I understand that the sound card D-A is likely to be a lot better than that in my CD-ROM player

But in a recent diskwipe I lost the utility .....and now I have a pile of CDs and nothing to play them on (sob).

Can anyone remind me what the software was called,and where I might get it? I had found it somewhere on the www , & recall that it was fairly obscure....but that's all I recall about it!

Thx

H

It is called Kernel Streaming and I have lost it as well maybe searching Google will show something!

[edit] ups double post [/edit]

No it's not - the plugin that you are refgerring to is the CD Reader plugin, a third party plugin that allowed Winamp to extract data digitally from the CD-ROM, as opposed to through the analog cable connecting the CD-ROM to the soundcard.

With the latest version of Winamp, this third party plugin is no longer needed, so download and install that first. Once this is done, start up Winamp, go to preferences (CTRL-P) -> plugins -> input -> Nullsoft CD/Linein plugin (in_cdda.dll) -> configure:

Make sure that "Enable digital audio extraction when possible" is checked.

thanks for that ethan_h

"With the latest version of Winamp, this third party plugin is no longer needed" - am I wanting ver 2 or ver 3?

h

Well, you posted in the Winamp 2 Technical Support forum, so I based all of my assumptions around Winamp 2. The instructions above are for Winamp 2, as is the download link.

It's 2.91 you want.

Follow ethan's link in the above post. Just click on the blue 'download'

(edit) seconds too slow again (/edit) :)

UJ

Sorry!
But doesn't the Kernel Streaming also paypass something?

"Well, you posted in the Winamp 2 Technical Support forum"....er, good point there

I'll have a go - and thanks

Kernel Streaming is technically called "Microsoft DirectKS". DirectKS works by opening a direct connection to an audio device and sending the data directly. This bypasses the Microsoft Windows Kernel Mixer, any device driver mixers or resamplers, etc. If you have bad device drivers that modify sound, experience one of the few known XP kMixer bugs, require (minimally) lower CPU usage, low latency output, or any other special case such as high samplerate output, then it's best to use KS. Known problems with KS include several issues, which vary wildly based on device drivers and hardware.

For example, in some cases kMixer resamples your output, but it could also your audio device drivers, and possibly the hardware itself that is ultimately responsible for the resampling. KS bypasses the first two, so you can ONLY output a different sample rate via KS if the hardware itself resamples. If it does not you must use the DSP resampler. Volume control is a similar issue. If it isn't controlled by hardware then it will not work when using the KS function, but you can use Foobar2000's volume control (Now called Attenuation). Sometimes monoural output via KS will only go to one channel depending on hardware, and lots of other issues I haven't mentioned. If your hardware doesn't support multiple hardware channels then using KS will result in your hardware being used in a locked state -- no other applications can use audio while FB2K is playing. Depending on your hardware you might experience some, all, or none of these problems. Also beware that if FB2K crashes or you encounter a bug while using KS, you can crash your system with a bluescreen error or hard lockup.

Edit: NOTE - Misconfiguring DirectKS can result in a loss of accuracy and quality. If you don't use the Resampler DSP and kMixer was resampling for you, it is possible that your audio hardware has lower quality resampling than kMixer. If, for example, most of your audio files are 44.1kHz and your hardware operates at 48kHz, expect lower quality.

In other words: If you do not know what you are doing, do not enable KS. If you do enable it and you don't understand your hardware and software completely, prepare for system crashes, instability, and lower sound quality!

Thanks for clearing that out ethan_h no way I am touching KS with a 12 feet pole now!

OK this whole bang shoot is working fine now, just like I wanted it to

Thx to all