Have you used DirectSound with VB?

[dgarroway98]

Well if you have, maybe you can help me. This is a problem that has had me stumped for about 2 months, and I can put it off no longer.

I am designing a network voice communication system. I'm using directsoundcapture to capture the voice from a microphone, then send it to another pc via a local network, place the data into a streaming directsoundbuffer at the other end, and play the sound there.

My problem is that there is very random breaks in the sound. Sometimes it will run for 5 minutes without breaking once, and other times it will have problems running 5 seconds without problems. By a break I mean it actually sounds like a knocking where the sound is cut out.

One key to this problem is the only time I can control the break is when I preform another windows task in the background. For example if I reduce another window in the background it will always knock once.

Well there it is. Anyone come across this before?

[kl899]

sounds like you need to buffer the sound a little more than what you're doing. try maybe 2-3 second buffer. the more buffer of course, the more delayed the sound will be so u have to find the right combination.

[dgarroway98]

I actually already have a 2 sec buffer. It is about all the delay that I can afford. After putting this in, it seemed to help, but the breaks still come back after about 5 minutes of play.

[kl899]

I don't think it's a logic problem with your code then, but a configuration problem with one of the pc's. Did you declare the direct sound object so that it has total control of the sound(i forget the exact name)? That could be the problem too, see if the problem occurs when a sound tries to play in the background (like the default windows beep).

[dgarroway98]

The directsoundbuffer has been set to have priority. Although, when I play a sound in the background it plays anyway. I have a soundblaster Live Platinum cards in both machines, and the card allows for mixing of sounds. Also the wav file in the background is unaffected by the knocking (it plays through it). So I guess this means the problem is that the directsoundbuffer needs priority cpu time?