multichannel setup?

Adam T's icon

What does Max need to let you start addressing more than 2 channels?

I've got a cheap little siig soundwave 7.1 channel USB sound card. I plugged it into a (Win7) machine with max on it and went to audio status and and after flipping around between different drivers, found one that let me assign all 8 channels on the sound card in I/O mappings. Made a little test patcher with it, worked fine. Great, I thought.

So I get a slightly nicer sound card and salvage a different machine (Win10) and try to set up the same thing for a more permanent basis, but now I can't find a driver option that allows I/O mapping for more than 2 channels. Despite going through setup for 7.1 channel in the windows sound driver and being able to play test noises to each channel there.

So I go and get the little 7.1 USB card and plug it into the new machine, thinking that I'd at least be able to choose the same driver I had on the first machine and proceed from there, right? But the list of selectable drivers doesn't change to reflect having the USB sound card plugged in - the driver I was having success with on the win7 machine isn't even listed as an option.

What do I need to do to get the Max on the new machine back to feeding 8 channel output?

Adam T's icon

Bump!

So, referring to https://docs.cycling74.com/max7/tutorials/04_mspaudioio - specifically, "Setting up MME, DirectSound Drivers, or WASAPI with MSP on Windows" - it is suggested to use "ad_portaudio Windows WASAPI" as a driver. The first machine I set up had this ad_portaudio driver available in Max, and I used it, and it worked.

The second machine I tried to set up doesn't have any portaudio options listed as available, only ad_directsound and ad_mme (which seem to function at a surface level for 2 channel, but cant set up output channels for 7.1). Even when the same sound hardware (USB sound device) is plugged in, and functioning correctly under Windows. Is it a Win10 vs Win7 issue?

How do I convince Max to offer me the ad_portaudio driver option (on a new setup) that was functioning for me previously (on the old setup)?

Kristina Wolfe's icon

Just downloaded Max 8 and the issue is still there