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Let me first say that you’ve created an amazing piece of code that has no rivals and I don’t think that there will be anytime soon any competition to what you are offering TODAY. Great job! I have only one problem – it seems that on XP your code process only output destined to the physical headphone jack of the PC. If I connect my PC via bluetooth to a bluetooth enabled headset, your code is bypassed. The only way I can send sound to a bluetooth headsed is via selecting under Control Panel->Sounds and Audio Devices->Audio->Sound playback the "Bluetooth Stereo Audio" (not the "Breakway Pipeline 1") which represents the bluetooth headset. When I select this I can hear the sound but your code is bypassed so I can not benefit from it. To make things more clear I have Thinkpad T60 which uses the WidComm bluetooth drivers (not the native Windows bluetooth drivers). I’m not sure if the problem is with the WidComm driver or with the way your code is attached to the OS. I have the feeling that this is not WidComm problem because this same driver has no problems when I connect a bluetooth enabled MP3 player to my laptop and output the sound from it to the headphone jack, connected to a home stereo system – in this case your code is active in the middle and I can benefit from it. It seems like your code can process only sound that is sent to the headphone jack of the computer and not to any other audio interface like bluetooth. Please help.
Hi Mike!
What about leaving Breakaway Pipeline selected as the Windows default, and then selecting your Bluetooth Headset in Breakaway?
If you right click the main window, and choose Settings, and then click the Wizard button in the lower left corner (for simplicity), you will see the audio setup wizard again, and you should be able to select your Bluetooth Headset instead of your sound card. If you don’t see it, click the "Safe Mode"
you should be able to select your Bluetooth Headset in the Output Audio Device drop-down.If you don’t see it in the list, try to check the Safe Mode checkbox, the one to the left of the drop-down.
Only problem is, if you do this, the audio will go ONLY to your bluetooth headset, not to the sound card (just like it would if you selected the bluetooth headset in Windows).
///Leif
Thank you sir. Your suggestion did the trick. I’m definitely buying your product. Just one last question before i do that. I’m planning to install it on my work laptop so I can enjoy it both while I’m traveling and when I’m home. The company I work for has a lease on my laptop for a 2 years period so I get a new one every 2 years. I’m expecting the new one in about 7 months. So my question is – can I install your product on the new laptop when I get it using the same license I’m going to get after I buy it let say tomorrow?
Hi Mike!
That won’t work – the code you’ll get today won’t work on another computer.
However, when you get the new laptop, just e-mail us with the new Hardware ID and we’ll gladly make you another license code.
///Leif
Thank you sir. I just ordered Breakaway.
One thing I hope you can fix in a future release. I’m using docking station for my laptop at work and if I try to undock the laptop while Breakaway is running (without playing any musing of course – I just have the Breakaway icon in my sys tray), I get the following message:
"You cannot eject your computer because one of the devices in the docking station, ‘USB Audio Device’, cannot be stopped because a program is still accessing it."
If I shut down Breakaway, I can undock without problems. Is it possible to fix this issue?
Hi Mike!
Thank you very much! 🙂
As for the problem, I’m afraid I don’t know of a good fix — not without bad side effects.
I have tested Breakaway extensively with USB sound cards. If you just pull the plug of a USB sound card, Breakaway will keep running (but the audio won’t go anywhere). Later, when you re-plug the USB sound card, Breakaway will pick right up and start playing again!
However, if you ask Windows whether it’s okay to unplug the USB card (instead of just unplugging it), windows says no, something is using it.
If it was just a matter of a USB sound card, i would say "just unplug it", but because it’s a docking station with more than just audio, that advice would be no good.
The only thing i could conceivably think of, is to have Breakaway close the output device when it’s not in use.
However, re-opening it again (when you play sound) is not instant. It may take as much as half a second. This means, it would be cutting out the first half second of the first song you play — not a good solution at all.
Having half a second of silence in the beginning of the file you play (which most songs have) does not help either, because I’d have to trigger on actually audio, Breakaway has no way of knowing the difference between playing silence and not playing at all.
If you’re running Windows XP, you could try the Hard Bypass mode. This might be easier than shutting Breakaway down.
///Leif
Hi Leif (I hope I can omit the "sir" part after we exchanged several messages so far),
As I stated above I already bought Breakaway. But I’m always curious about things I don’t understand. I have only basic knowledge about OSes – what I make money off of are networks and they are what I pretend I know really well. From network stand point, end points are (please no offence) simply "hopeless dumb things" you have to provide services to…🙂 But even with my basic knowledge of OSes I’m curious of what exactly is going on here and I’ll be happy if you can enlighten me – you know knowledge about things, if legal, can never hurt…🙂 As far as I know in Microsoft all drivers go into what Microsoft calls HAL. Everything that gets in HAL is shown into the "Device Manager". After I installed Breakaway I saw that in my device manager under "Sound, video and game controllers" I have a new entry called "Breakaway Pipeline". If I’m right so far, you have a piece of your code running within HAL – let call this "low level layer" of your code. I don’t think that all of your code is running inside HAL because of the message I mentioned to you in my previous post. It looks like another piece of your code is opening a link with the HAL layer of your code (the "low level layer") – let call this piece of code "high level layer". It seems like this link stays open all the time and can not be closed by the OS – I think that this is the problem here. If I’m right so far, I’m sure that the OS has a mechanism to signal to the "high level layer" of any code that it has to disconnect from its "low level layer". That’s what I think the OS is trying to do when I’m undocking my laptop and in case of no success, I get the message I mentioned in my previous post. What I don’t understand is why your "high level layer" can not respond to the message from the OS to disconnect from its "low level layer". I think this way becasue I had to deal with several vendors so far about the same issues I’m having with Breakaway and so far I ended either solving my problems via code update from the vendor or I have to live with the problem because the vendor has no clue what his problem is. If I have to live with the problem, all I have to do is shut down the vendor equipment before undocking and everything is ok – no biggie. But I’m really curious about your implementation – you seem to be very knowledgeable, honest and "no bullshit" guy.
If I have to undock my laptop, it is more than obvious that at this moment the last thing I care about is if I can still hear my music. As far as I know laptops are using different HW profiles when docked and when undocked. Logically that means that there should be a way for the OS to signal to the "high level layer’ of all programs installed that have "low level layer" that the "low level layer" is again available. I have my speakers connected to the docking station. So when I undock it, I would assume you and the OS will know it will lose connection with them and that will be the reason for the OS to try to stop your link to the "low level layer". If I’m right so far, it looks like what I requested in my previous message should be doable. Can you please enlighten me in this area? I’m really curious.
Thank you upfront for any answer – I clearly understand that if you decide to answer me, it will be pure waste of your time so if you don’t feel like answering, that’s ok with me..
Hi Mike!
First names work just fine 🙂.
Your terminology is technically correct, although uncommon 🙂. The low-level layer is usually referred to as "Kernel Mode", and the high-level layer as "User Mode".
Breakaway Pipeline is indeed a driver (runs in Kernel Mode), and appears to the system as hardware (a sound card). When you install Breakaway, this driver is set to be the default sound card – therefore, whenever user-mode applications play audio, its gets sent to this driver.
However, this driver, in reality, is not really a sound card – instead, what it does is to send the audio back to user-mode, where Breakaway is (hopefully) running to accept the audio, process it, and send it to the REAL sound card (the one hooked up to your speakers).
However, this driver is not really a cause of the problem you were describing before (Windows refuses to undock).
You were saying that the operating system would send a message to user-mode applications, in essence saying "i’m unplugging this device now – stop using it or i’ll make you".
However, that’s not usually how it works.
Consider the example of plugging in a USB flash drive, opening a console window (cmd.exe) and navigating to that drive (for example by typing G: and pressing enter).
Then, leave the console right where it is, and single-click the "safely remove hardware" icon in the tray, and try remove that device.Instead of it succeeding, you get a message box : "The device cannot be stopped right now. Try stopping the device again later".
Highly unhelpful!
If it would have at least said "cmd.exe is using it" then that would have been a clue, but it didn’t.
On the other hand, if you had an explorer window open, looking at the USB drive, then safely remove hardware would succeed, and close the explorer window, following the philosophy you described.
So, it’s *possible* for things to work this way, but to the best of my knowledge, they don’t, not when it comes to audio.
The problem is that Breakaway keeps the sound card open at all times, even when not playing audio.
So, the closest solution to your problem that I can think of, would be to make Breakaway only open the sound card when there is actual audio to play.
This will have the side effect of causing a slight glitch when you’re just starting to play, if the sound card was not already open. I’d have to have some kind of silence count, so that it would for example close the sound card after 5 seconds of silence.
If this mode of operations is acceptable to you, I’ll take a look – it may not be terribly hard to implement an option for Breakaway to work this way. However, I personally wouldn’t put up with this – the slight glitch would drive me nuts. Admittedly, i’m an extra special case when it comes to audio, so it might be worth it for you to avoid the annoyance when undocking your laptop.
Idea! As an alternative (and better) solution, though.. How about connecting your speakers to the headphone output of the laptop, instead of the docking station, and making Breakaway use the laptop’s internal sound instead of the docking stations?
I believe this would completely cure the problem, as there would be no audio device in use to disconnect.
///Leif
Thanks a lot for spending the time to answer me Leif. I really appreciate it. I think I got it. BTW I already tested moving my speakers to the laptop headphone jack while docked and then try to undock and yes, there is no problem in this case – this is actually what made me send my previous post. But as you explained to me when it comes to audio there is no such signaling from the Microsoft OS to the user mode apps that I was dreaming about. What I’m doing now when I want to undock is hard bypass on Breakaway – this is just a click away and works perfectly for me. My previous post was just to get educated and thank you for spending the time to teach me.
[quote author=”Leif”]Hi Mike!
What about leaving Breakaway Pipeline selected as the Windows default, and then selecting your Bluetooth Headset in Breakaway?
If you right click the main window, and choose Settings, and then click the Wizard button in the lower left corner (for simplicity), you will see the audio setup wizard again, and you should be able to select your Bluetooth Headset instead of your sound card. If you don’t see it, click the "Safe Mode"
you should be able to select your Bluetooth Headset in the Output Audio Device drop-down.If you don’t see it in the list, try to check the Safe Mode checkbox, the one to the left of the drop-down.
Only problem is, if you do this, the audio will go ONLY to your bluetooth headset, not to the sound card (just like it would if you selected the bluetooth headset in Windows).
///Leif[/quote]
Hello,
I bought breakaway recently and I’m very satisfied. However, I use mobile speakers connected by USB which can not receive the sound at the same time that my PC speakers. I would like to know if there’s a way to get the sound on both at the same time. Thank you! (scuse my bad english)
Hi Smog!
Bad english?? Dude, you spell better than most native speakers, I can’t find a single error in your post, neither spelling nor grammatical! 🙂
It’s *possible* to write an application to output audio through two devices at the same time.
The problem is that because they’re different devices, they can never be perfectly synchronized. One pair of speakers would be slightly more delayed than the other, and create a strange sounding echo-effect if you tried to turn both on at the same time.
It could also be a configuration nightmare, confusing for a lot of users. Do you know of any other programs that are doing this? If so, please let me know – it might give me some ideas for how to do it sensibly. No promises, but I’ll take a look, and keep it in mind.
///Leif
[quote author=Leif link=topic=31.msg143#msg143 date=1208080415]
Hi Mike!What about leaving Breakaway Pipeline selected as the Windows default, and then selecting your Bluetooth Headset in Breakaway?
If you right click the main window, and choose Settings, and then click the Wizard button in the lower left corner (for simplicity), you will see the audio setup wizard again, and you should be able to select your Bluetooth Headset instead of your sound card. If you don't see it, click the "Safe Mode"
you should be able to select your Bluetooth Headset in the Output Audio Device drop-down.If you don't see it in the list, try to check the Safe Mode checkbox, the one to the left of the drop-down.
Only problem is, if you do this, the audio will go ONLY to your bluetooth headset, not to the sound card (just like it would if you selected the bluetooth headset in Windows).
///Leif
[/quote]Thank you Leif, this worked for sure. One thing though. I had to select output to DS instead of KS, otherwise it couldn't understand the Bluetooth device (while on KS it saw the device as Drivers\bthhfenum.sys,#2;%1 Hands-Free something so I switched to DS and it worked.
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