Thread: Anyone use multiple USB sound cards?

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I've seen them being sold for cheap. I was thinking with the right program. It would be a good way to control multiple sounds through one computer. Anyone ever try this?

Plus, I was wondering since they have a mic jack. Would there be a way to use the mic jack as a trigger to activate the card to play sound through a prop?

Maybe, even have some way to wire a PIR sensor to give a click sound through the mic jack to make the sound card play. I thought I saw something like that somewhere around here or on the internet.

I recently bought a sylvania mp3 player for next to nothing. Holds 2gb worth of audio files and immediately starts playing audio and loops endlessly.

Take your audio and use the left channel for one sound and the right channel for another sound. Buy a few of these and you have 2x(number of players) worth of looping sound!

While a little more expensive ($11) I use 2 gig mp3 players. Set them to loop/repeat. Hack the play button to a motion sensor and they play when tripped. Works great for my pneumatics. One battery last around 10 hr. More then enough for me.



http://cgi.ebay.com/USB-2-GB-2GB-WMA...item35aaffa99e

Originally Posted by Industen

While a little more expensive ($11) I use 2 gig mp3 players. Set them to loop/repeat. Hack the play button to a motion sensor and they play when tripped. Works great for my pneumatics. One battery last around 10 hr. More then enough for me.

How did you find the delay from the moment play is pressed? And does your player pause if the play button is held closed from the light sensor?

I was thinking that it would be great to keep it looping and use a relay to allow my audio to the speaker when the sensor goes off and drops the audio when deactivated.

Great tip, thanks.

I dont think you could run multiple on one computer.

You can run multiple, as long as the OS can differentiate them from each other (basically as long as they have different chipsets.) It's a little tricky to set it up - Windows volume control doesn't really like it. I've done it with WinAmp (don't remember which version - sorry).

Not sure about using the mic input as a trigger - it could probably be done with software, but I don't know of anything that does it out of the box. If you're using VSA, look at Helmsman from MonkeyBasic. You could hack a USB keyboard to get up to 5 inputs.

I like those mp3 player ideas!!

I know you can have more than one sound play through your PC. It depends on how many sound cards you have and the program running them. Here's one for example:
http://www.breakthrusoftware.com/htm...auntedweb.html