Plugable

Howto: Adjusting C-Media USB Audio Volume in Windows 7

Posted on 28. Oct, 2010 by Bernie Thompson in Windows

The Plugable UD-160-A Universal Docking Station and the Plubable DC-125 Zero Client Docking Station provide 2 channel USB audio via a CM-6300 chip. The CM-6300 is a “driverless” solution in that it complies with the USB audio class standard, and uses Microsoft’s own drivers provided in Windows 7. That also means that the software options for controlling the device are all in the hands of Windows 7 itself.

The UD-160-A and other powered CM-6300 devices can be configured in hardware to deliver high power audio output, so it’s great even with unpowered speakers. But for headsets and self-powered speakers, the defaults may be too loud.

For those cases and others, here are some details and tips for adjusting the volume in Windows 7 with USB audio.

First off, it helps to bring up some music in Windows Media player so you can hear the affect of your settings changes. Most Windows 7 installs will have some sample music to play in Libraries->Music->Sample Music

Then, go to where the settings are collected — in the “Sound” settings from the Windows 7 Control Panel.

This will bring up the list of available audio devices, one of which should be your USB audio device. By default, Windows 7 makes a new USB audio device the default — even if it doesn’t have any speakers attached! So this is also the place where, if you’re not actually using your USB or docking station audio, you can select a different audio output (e.g. your laptop’s built-in audio) and click “Set Default” to make it the default for new default sound output and/or for communications (messenger/skype/voip). Windows will persist this setting.

For adjusting the USB audio level, right click on the USB audio device to bring up the context menu and select “Properties”.

The main volume for the device is in the “Levels” tab. When this audio device is the default device, this level is the same as the Windows master audio volume controls (the one you adjust from the sound icon in the Windows system tray) — adjusting one will adjust the other. The default in Windows is a max volume of “100″.

For the high-power audio of the Plugable dock, combined with powered speakers, “100″ is often too loud, and you may find that even setting the level to “1″ is still too loud.

The solution is the “Custom” tab which has an optional “Loudness” checkbox (provided by the Microsoft USB audio class drivers). Windows 7 sets this on by default, but in most cases it should be unchecked. Then, go back to your levels tab and re-adjust the volume to the right and comfortable level.

For most speaker combinations, you should no longer be having to peg the volume down at “1″.

And once you have master volume at a comfortable level – you also have another means of control. Each application has its own volume, which acts in combination with the Windows master settings. So if system sounds or media playback are still to loud or not the right relative volume, look within the particular application for its own sound slider (and most applications will persist this setting).

We hope this helps for anyone experiencing audio which is too loud or too quiet with any Plugable or other USB audio devices on Win 7. Please feel free to comment with any questions or other suggestions.

[Update March 2, 2011]

If you’re on Windows, and the above steps don’t help enough, there is a Windows driver solution to bump the volume down further.

This driver replaces Windows’ default USB audio driver, it’s compatible with the CM6300 in the Plugable Universal Dock. Most functionality doesn’t apply to the CM6300, but the fine grained control over volume is better and helpful.

Here’s where you can download the lower-volume CM6300 driver. Please let us know in the comments if you have any problems or feedback. Thanks!

Google Nexus One Phone and Plugable’s Universal Dock

Posted on 27. Jun, 2010 by Bernie Thompson in Using

Sven Killig has posted a few more bits of his cool Google Nexus One USB host mode work, this time running with the Plugable Universal Docking Station.

Plugable UD-160-A driving 1920x1080 display and more, all from a humble Nexus One phone

This setup uses the udlfb DisplayLink Linux driver work from here (git.plugable.com) and a bunch of other components Sven has developed or pulled together, to turn the phone into a full computer with display, keyboard, audio and more. His video of this has gone viral (over 85,000 views). You can see the video and full instructions at Sven’s site. Very cool.

The photo above is of the Plugable UD-160-A Universal Docking Station, in use at Sven’s desk (the dock is laying on its side to better fit in the photo – Sven has removed the weighted bottom stand).

The Plugable dock is perfect for this kind of application with the Nexus One phone — it includes all the USB devices in one place, all with open source drivers. The dock has its own 2.5A AC power (see the USB dual-power Y cable plugged into the front USB A and back USB B ports), along with driving the 1920×1080 monitor (the big DVI cable in the back), and providing ethernet (above the DVI) and audio (in the front – he doesn’t have them plugged in in the pic).

So this all is great for geeks, but when will this work out of the box? Several comments on Sven’s work are messages like “Google! Integrate this into Android now!”

With Google offices near here, and with related USB terminal work on the same Plugable dock being funded as a Google Summer of Code project, it would be great to demo this and get things moving… Whatcha say, Google!?

Workaround for Mac OS X Conflicts between DisplayLink and USB ethernet

Posted on 16. Jun, 2010 by Bernie Thompson in Using

[ Update April 27th, 2011. DisplayLink has fixed this issue in the production version 1.6 release of their Mac drivers. Please download the latest Mac drivers from DisplayLink ]

Plugable uses DisplayLink chips for USB graphics, and ASIX chips for USB Ethernet functionality. And we have both chips in devices like our Plugable USB 2.0 Universal Docking Station.

Unfortunately, on Mac OS X, there is a conflict between recent DisplayLink drivers 1.5+ and the Apple drivers (AppleUSBEthernet) for ASIX chips. The DisplayLink drivers appear to open other USB devices as part of enumeration. As a side effect, this causes USB ethernet devices to show as “disconnected” upon return from system boot or hibernate.

That’s in addition to other graphics and ethernet driver compatibility breaks that Apple’s recent OS X 10.6 updates have introduced, including breaking AppleUSBEthernet for non-Apple USB ethernet hardware.

Until these issues settle down and are fixed in the drivers from DisplayLink, ASIX, and Apple, here is a workaround for the current issues with the ethernet function of the Plugable Universal Docking Station:

Step 1 is to download and install ASIX drivers that are compatible with recent Mac OS X 10.6: http://plugable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/AppleDefaultDriver_v2.1.5.zip

Step 2 is to copy the following script to a file (call it “install”), and run “sudo ./install”

#!/bin/bash
sudo echo "#!/bin/bash" > /usr/bin/plugable-eth-reset
sudo echo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleUSBEthernet >> /usr/bin/plugable-eth-reset
sudo echo kextload -b com.apple.driver.AppleUSBEthernet >> /usr/bin/plugable-eth-reset
sudo chown root /usr/bin/plugable-eth-reset
sudo chmod o+x /usr/bin/plugable-eth-reset
sudo defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook /usr/bin/plugable-eth-reset

Now, logging out and logging back in will automatically reload the ethernet driver. Unfortunately, this does not cover the return from low-power cases. Unless we find an improvement to the workaround, you’ll have to log out/log in or just run “sudo /usr/bin/eth-reset” so trigger the script.

As there may be variations in systems out there, please comment if you get different results, and we’ll post an update here at Plugable if (as we hope) this is fixed more directly in the DisplayLink or ASIX drivers in the future.

And, generally if you’re a Mac OS X user, please be cautious about OS updates which might break 3rd party hardware drivers. If you have non-Apple USB hardware, consider deferring updates until there’s time for other people to report on forums about compatibility.