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!

How Well Does the New MacBook Air Work with DisplayLink?

Posted on 20. Oct, 2010 by Bernie Thompson in UGA-2K-A

DisplayLink USB 2.0 graphics adapters are the easiest way to get multiple monitors attached to a laptop, especially one with limited connectivity. USB is ubiquitous, and you can always add an inexpensive USB hub to get more ports.

But compatibility with the Mac has been hit-and-miss. Mac OS has no special support for USB graphics – so DisplayLink’s drivers have to do quite a bit of work to integrate with the OS. And Apple’s new OS updates and platforms have sometimes broken the drivers, requiring another update from DisplayLink to set things right.

In particular, in the 15″ and 17″ MacBook Pro models introduced in 2010, Apple added hybrid switching Intel/nVidia graphics for power management purposes. The OS switches between them depending on whether lower power (Intel) or higher 3D performance (nVidia GeForce GT 330M) is called for. Unfortunately, that switching conflicts with USB graphics in Mac OS X in significant ways that DisplayLink has been unable to solve. As a workaround, users with these MacBooks can turn off graphics switching in the control panel.

On the bright side, with the 13″ MacBook Pro, Apple moved entirely to using nVidia’s latest low-power chipset, the GeForce 320M, which both is 1) an all-in-one non-switching solution and 2) makes use of integrated memory, which is a good match for USB graphics. This MacBook Pro doesn’t have the compatibility problems of the 15″ and 17″ versions.

The new MacBook Air, announced today, now too is potentially a great match for USB graphics – a small and light notebook for travel, but with the ability to connect many devices and up to 4 independent displays (one USB graphics adapter per display), all via inexpensive USB 2.0 hubs to expand beyond the two built-in ports.

But what about compatibility?

Fortunately, Apple has announced that the new MacBook Air uses the same nVidia GeForce 320M graphics solution as the MacBook Pro 13″ model, so the compatibility story should be the same. Just make sure to use DisplayLink’s latest 1.6 beta 3 drivers or newer, for full 64-bit OS support and the latest fixes.

This is based solely on the specs for now – hopefully we’ll get a newly minted Macbook Air owner to post here with their experiences. And again, for Mac OS X these are beta drivers for now, so only somewhat adventurous users should jump in to experience any of this multi-monitor madness.

DisplayLink Releases Updated Windows Driver (version 5.5)

Posted on 01. Oct, 2010 by Bernie Thompson in Windows

DisplayLink has released an updated Windows Driver (version 5.5, dated September 29th, 2010), which is available for download here.

This update is compatible with all of Plugable’s products with DisplayLink-based USB graphics.

This is a must-have update for all with machines with ATI/AMD as their primary graphics controller, as it works around serious issues introduced with ATI’s Catalyst™ 10.8 driver release. ATI’s driver was released just recently (August). ATI has not pushed this update widely, but over time we expect more ATI/AMD users will need to make sure they’re running DisplayLink driver version 5.5 or later.

In terms of new features, DisplayLink’s version 5.5 driver also includes:

• Windows Presentation Foundation compatibility on Windows XP — a big deal for XP users who use Visual Studio 2010 or any of the other (limited but growing) list of applications built on WPF
• ‘Fit to TV’ functionality for HDMI TVs
• GUI menu enhancements
• Some improvements in motion video playback performance on Windows 7 and Vista

See the 5.5 release notes for details.