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Posts Tagged ‘audio’

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All HP Pavilion dv6753ca XP Drivers

September 29th, 2010 by Connor McBrine-Ellis | No Comments | Filed in Tech

When I first got my HP Pavilion DV6753ca computer, it had Vista installed on it!  This was back in 2008.

I felt like downgrading to XP, because I liked the experience on XP better, and one of my favorite applications wouldn’t run on Vista, but would only work on XP.  So I downgraded, but I soon realized that HP, the manufacturer, didn’t really provide any XP drivers for this laptop!  I was really thrown for a loop!

After HOURS and HOURS of endless searching, I’ve managed to compile an almost complete list of all the drivers you need, and I’ve included downloads also, so you can get them all of this one page!  BOOKMARK IT!  Some of these drivers are out of date, like the nVidia drivers, but they work just fine, and I don’t think there are any newer version available for XP, so if you really want XP you’ll have to put up with that.

Otherwise, you could go with Windows 7 .  What’s handy about installing Windows 7 on this particular laptop is that you don’t have to really manually install any drivers at all!  Once you’ve installed windows, it automatically installs all the drivers for you, including your video drivers!

The DRIVERS:

nVidia Graphics Driver

SM56 Modem Driver

Realtek HD Audio Driver

Realtek PCI-E Ethernet Driver

Intel Chipset Driver

Lightscribe Driver

Synaptics Touchpad Driver

Intel® Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN

I hope that all of your driver installations run smoothly!  Please comment here if this works for you, or comment if you have a problem.

Thanks!

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MSN Messenger Now Playing Plugin for Foobar2000 v1.1

September 26th, 2010 by Connor McBrine-Ellis | 8 Comments | Filed in Apps, Music

After much searching, this is a plugin that works with MSN Messenger or Windows Live Messenger, but also works with the latest version of Foobar2000 (v1.1 at the time of writing)!  None of the other plugins I tested would work because they were out of date.

Enjoy!  Let me know it works for you!

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Foobar2000:Components_0.9/WLM_Notifier_%28foo_wlm%29

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Sansa Fuze – The Real Comparison

October 30th, 2009 by Craig McBrine | 2 Comments | Filed in Reviews

          iPods seem to be all the rage these days, encapsulating its buyers into a dreamland of a sophistication and self-importance that is solely based on the fact that you are carrying around an expensive Apple product, and anyone who does not own one or dislikes them, is an outcast and should be treated as such. In fact, from 2002 to 2007 Apple sold 100 million iPods. Of course the popularity of the iPod is still increasing, luring people in with the only program it works with, iTunes. I have asked my friends why the decided to get an iPod and they said, “Because of iTunes. iTunes is such a good program with billions of songs and movies and tons of stuff!”

          In reality, iPods are very expensive, and iTunes uses major DRM restrictions on everything purchased there so you can only use the songs you buy from them on your iPod and nothing else!  iTunes is really the iPod’s true weakness – the iPod will not sync to any other program and iTunes is really horrible software.  If you want to share a song with a friend, it won’t let you!  Although many think it is illegal, is quite common and really shouldn’t be considered illegal as many people also used to share songs on cassette tapes back in the 80′s. Are they worth all of this extra cash? Is there an alternative?

          There are many companies that have tried competing with the iPod, but I think that SanDisk takes the cake. The SanDisk Sansa Fuze is an amazing mp3 player, at a fraction of the price that most iPod Nanos cost. The Sansa Fuze could even be comparable to the iPod Classic. The Fuze has a 1.9 inch viewing screen, it plays videos, music, shows pictures, and it has FM Radio and a Voice Recorder directly built into it! Apple is just barely coming out with iPods that have built in radio.

          The Fuze also comes with an expandable microSD card slot! That means you could get an 8gb microSD card, and the 8gb Fuze, and have 16gb in storage space. iPods do not have the option to expand its storage space. Also, the Fuze is not tied down to one program. It works with Windows Media Player, Rhapsody, WinAmp and works with pretty much any program you want! It even plays formats that iPods cannot play like .mp3, .wav, and .wma.

          The 4gb Fuze is only $50-$60, and to get an 8gb microSD card is only another $10, and to get an 8gb iPod Nano it is $150. The iPod is more than twice as expensive as the Fuze.

          In conclusion, the iPod and the Fuze both have the same features, but the Fuze has just a little bit more, at a fraction of the price. Its sleek look and feel can be compared over the look and feel of the iPods. If you are looking for flexibility, and portability and a low price, take a look at what the Sansa Fuze has to offer. You no longer need to be caught in the web of Apple.

Check out www.amazon.com for these great prices, and free shipping!

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Watch Hulu in Canada

October 22nd, 2009 by Connor McBrine-Ellis | 1 Comment | Filed in How Tos

Watching Hulu, the american TV show streaming service, is usually prevented by Hulu’s geoblocking, yet some in the past have found ways to bypass that through proxies.  Hulu is now implementing Proxy detection, which makes it even harder to watch the last few episodes of your favorite show in high quality.

You can watch Hulu using Hotspot Shield, but you have to make sure that the Hotspot Shield server you’re using is the White Plains, New York server.  To do this, just connect to Hotspot Shield, and then go to ip-adress.com and it will tell you which server you’re using.  If it’s not the White Plains server, then just disconnect from Hotspot Shield and then try reconnecting till it assigns you to the White Plains server.

This also should get Pandora and Spotify to work outside of the US.

Enjoy your new free streaming media, and don’t forget to post in the comments section and tell us if it works!

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Downgrading from WMP 12 to 11 in Windows 7

October 20th, 2009 by Connor McBrine-Ellis | 5 Comments | Filed in How Tos

Windows Media Player 12 in Windows 7 has a new UI that doesn’t include as many sleek transparency features as WMP 11 did, and Microsoft also for some reason removed the Advanced Tag Editor, one of my favorite features because my WMP Custom Album Art tutorial uses it, and because you can edit a whole albums tags in batch.

I see no real benefit to using Windows Media Player 12, as Windows Media Player 11 seems, at least to me, to be a much more well-rounded, and better looking too, music / video organizer and player.

How to install Windows Media Player 11 onto Windows 7:

  1. Go to the start menu, type services.msc and hit enter.

  2. Stop the Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service.

  3. Install this registry edit (zipped): Take Ownership Context Menu Hack.

  4. Now take ownership of these items by selecting them in Windows Explorer and then right-clicking them and selecting Take Ownership in the context menu:All files in “Program Files\Windows Media Player\” folder
    All files starting with “wmp” in System32 folder
    wmploc.dll.mui in “System32\en-us\” folder.

  5. Download Windows Media Player 11 for Windows 7 and install. If you get an error message saying that wmploc.dll.mui is in use by a process, then kill sidebar.exe.  You’ll need to restart after install Windows Media Player.

  6. Run regedit and delete the key “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Setup\Installed Versions”.

  7. If you want a good Windows 7 theme for WMP 11, check this one out:

    http://bogo-d.deviantart.com/art/7-for-Windows-Media-Player-11-105796300

    This skin is quite amazing – it combines the best elements of both WMP 11 and 12 to make an amazing looking skin.

I hope that you’ve enjoyed my tutorial, and enjoy your newly installed WMP 11 on Windows 7!

A better version of this tutorial: http://www.askvg.com/how-to-get-windows-media-player-wmp-taskbar-toolbar-back-in-windows-7/

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How To Remove Windows Explorer / MSIE Browsing Click

September 11th, 2009 by Connor McBrine-Ellis | 1 Comment | Filed in How Tos

It can be quite irritating. There seems to be this clicking sound everytime you browse to a new folder in Windows Explorer or follow a hyperlink in either Internet Explorer. Wondering how to remove it? It’s quite simple.

Remove Browsing Click:

  1. Go to the Control Panel
  2. Open the Sounds and Audio Devices Control Panel App
  3. Go to the Sounds tab
  4. Find the “Start Navigation” Program Event
  5. Select “(None)” as the sound.
  6. Press OK, and you’re all set!  Enjoy.
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Add Custom Album Art in Windows Media Player

August 12th, 2009 by Connor McBrine-Ellis | 7 Comments | Filed in How Tos

If you have an album in Windows Media Player 11 that seems to have a hard time finding its own artwork/tags, there are other ways to find album art for these songs and add it to Windows Media Player.  We’ll walk you through it.

*NEW* – If you’re using Windows 7′s crappy Windows Media Player 12, check out my tutorial on how to downgrade to version 11 before doing this tutorial as the Advanced Tag Editor in version 12 has been removed!

So here’s our album with no artwork:

Now we can search on Google Images for an Album Art image file for this album.

Now download that image for the album you’re trying to find album art for and save it into a folder you can remember it’s in.

Bring Windows Media Player open again and right-click one of the tracks in your album.

Click Advanced Tag Editor.

Now, go to the Images tab, and click Add.  Find the album art image file you just downloaded and then click Open.

Select the image to be the Front Cover art, then apply/close the dialog box.  Your album art should now be on your album!!  Presto!

If your album art still does not show, then try right clicking the album in Windows Media Player and clicking Update Album Info.

Enjoy the Album Art!!!

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Grooveshark: Stream Any Song

July 17th, 2009 by Connor McBrine-Ellis | No Comments | Filed in Music, Online, Reviews

Grooveshark is a cool new music streaming service that has ‘millions of songs’ available for streaming.  You can search for music, view songs you recently listened to

It is powered by its users, as in, all the music comes from its users.  The users install Grooveshark’s upload tool, which then indexes the users’ music collection and then uploads it to Grooveshark, where it is available for streaming from any computer.

Just search for the song you’re looking for, and then play.  You can even queue things into your current playlist, and then save your playlists for future playback.

Try it out now!

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Does file sharing help music artists?

May 11th, 2009 by Connor McBrine-Ellis | 4 Comments | Filed in Essays and Stuff, Online, Other, Piracy, Tech

Many people wonder whether file sharing can actually increase revenue for music labels and artists because it helps both newer and older artists to be discovered or rediscovered. This question is frequently asked by fans and artists alike. I believe that BitTorrent is an excellent system and model for marketing and distributing media, such as music and movies, and should not be opposed the way it currently is by organizations such as the IFPI and the MPAA – it may even be making up a large figure of their sales!

Peer to peer technologies have been proven to be an effective marketing / promotion tools, For instance, in 2007, Radiohead made an interesting move in which their fans could make whatever payment that they wanted, including nothing; the site only advised, “it’s up to you” or free, or “Choose what you pay”, so that the fans could pay the amount they wanted for the album.
Of course, the band did not actually release their sales figures, yet the album became famous as the first one released in this method, and generated much publicity. New websites are now also following Radiohead’s model, as in “Choose what you pay”, such as the new public music tracker, Coda.FM.

BitTorrent is more effective as a marketing tool for artists that are not already established, yet for those already established as an artists, it may hinder them more than help, because since they are already popular, the viral nature of BitTorrent is not as useful, and many people will “leech” the music instead of buying it.

A report from the BI Norwegian School of Management has found that those who download music illegally are also 10 times more likely to pay for songs than those who don’t. This is because those who download music are generally music enthusiasts that agree that you should have the right to see exactly what you are buying before you buy it, and if it’s no good, then they won’t buy it. These enthusiasts see this as completely fair, yet the IFPI disagrees. Many people also say “I’d never buy it anyways!”, which is generally true, yet, they are obtaining the Intellectual Property for free – and thus comes the question – is IP even worth anything?

There is no doubt that the downloading of music for free will continue nevertheless, yet the question will remain in our minds, are we helping the artist (as in “increasing their revenue” or increasing exposure), or costing them? I believe that in the future, music will be either free, cost very little, or the consumer will choose the price – either way, the actual worth of something that can be copied, distributed, and reproduced countless times, all for free, will forever be disputed.

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How to get ASIO drivers for any Sound Card

November 12th, 2008 by Connor McBrine-Ellis | 2 Comments | Filed in How Tos, Offline, Tech

I recently installed Guitar Rig onto my computer and when I plugged in my guitar, I couldn’t really hear anything but a whole bunch of crackling. I adjusted the settings and I could hear my guitar but there was a lot of latency (time between when I hit the string and when I could actually hear it on the computer). There was still a lot of crackling when I was playing, and the latency was really bad, so I did a bit of research and I found out that in order to get rid of the crackling when you play (and the huge latency issue) you need to use ASIO drivers with your sound card.

Guitar Rig 3 with ASIO

If you click on the file menu, and then go to audio setup, then you should get this dialog box (or do the equivalent in whatever software you are using). Here, in the interface menu on the soundcard tab, you probably won’t have the option for ASIO (if you’re having these problems). If you do have it, select it as the Interface. If you don’t then go to ASIO4ALL, download it, and install it, and then voila, problem solved! (Don’t forget to go back and change the interface to AISO).

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