The Windows NT Enlightened Sound Driver

This is the homepage for WinESD.  WinESD is a sound driver for Windows NT 4.0 that pipes all sound output to the esound daemon.  The driver acts as a esd client ala esddsp.

The Problem

On my desk in my office I have two computers, a machine running NT 4.0 and a Linux box.  I find it silly to have soundcards in both machines for several reasons (even though a cheap sound card is $7.99).  First, you either have to have two sets of speakers or cable from one soundcards output to the others "Line In".  The first option just clutters up an already wrecked desk.  The second is a bad idea electrically (noise).

The Solution

Since both machines are on a network, the obvious solution was to use the esound daemon.  Since the company I work for is a Micro$oft Certified "Solution" Provider I have access to the Windows NT DDK.  Two nights of hacking later and, well see below.

Current Status

Warning !.  The driver is pre-ALPHA.  It might destroy data.  It might make funny noises that your neighbors find Rude.  If it breaks, you get to keep both pieces.

Currently, the driver works as an output only driver.  The sample source code mmdrv.dll was hacked into esddrv.dll with some of esdlib.c from the esound package to make the connections to the server.  The code is exceptionally ugly right now.  Pieces are commented out, forced to non-error returns etc.  Also, there is a problem with certain sample rates and/or bit formats.  Most sounds play, but a few don't.

The support for esd authentication in esdlib was hacked up, so if your esd server requires authentication, your hosed.

Download

download Version 0.01 here.
Update 8/16/99 Verson 0.02 is here.  This fixes several problems with NT 5.0 and the Windows MultiMedia player.
Update 7/5/2000 Verson 0.03 is here (source ).  This fixes several problems with Windows 2000 and some installation issues.

Installation

The latest version (0.03) will install in Windows 2000 and NT 4.0. The installation is tricky, and somewhat hacked. Maybe 0.04 will fix this.

• After unzipping the zip file, go to the "Multimedia" control panel.
• Select the "devices" tab.
• Click on "Add"
• choose "Unlisted or Updated driver"
• type in the Path where WinESD was unzipped.  The installation may complain about the driver already being on the system.  I don't know why this is, but I think the OEMSETUP.INF file needs to be reviewed.
• Add a registry value "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Enlightened\WinESD\ESPEAKER" (REG_SZ) that contains the node name of your esd machine (i.e. "linuxhost:16001"). The port number is needed--Old version of esound used 5001, new version use 16001
• Reboot

If you have questions, email me.  I can't guarantee that I'll be able to answer the question, but I'll try.

Source Code

As of 7/5/2000, I have added a zipfile containing my source code directory. It requires the NT DDK to compile. Unzip the file in the \ddk\src\mmedia directory on your NT system and use the 'build' command to compile everything.

The TODO List

• Add support for recording
• Add support for the mixer (i.e. volume control)
• Bugfixes
• License problems
• Full esound support for NT.  I believe the best way to do this is to use Cygwin32 and just compile the various command line programs.  This doesn't work out of the box, but I think it should be pretty easy. esd should be the most work.
• A Windows 95/98 version has been requested. I don't have system with either of these on it, nor do I know much about the differences between the Multimedia API's. If there is sufficient interest, I can setup such an environment and have a go at it.