[music-dsp] Stable multichannel waveplayer/recorder that can be controlled via cmd-line (Windows)??

[oberfeld]

Dear list,

I'm aware that my question does not exactly meet the focus of this list,
nevertheless I feel/hope that many of you could hint to a solution to my
problem...

I'm a psychologist doing research in psychoacoustics. For my
experiments, I have to generate 2-8 channels of audio and to
simultaneously record 2-4 channels.

As the experiments have to be controlled via some script/program (I
mainly use MATLAB), I need a waveplayer/recorder that can be controlled
via the command line, alternatively via an API that can be used in VC++
or MATLAB.

To give an example, I would like to call the program by specifying, 
e.g., two
stereo wave files (stim1.wav and stim2.wav) which contain my stimuli (4
channels) and one stereo wave file that receives the recoding (rec.wav) by

playrec stim1.wav stim2.wav rec.wav

This should then result in playback of the two stim files (on 2 x 2 
channels
of my audio card; preferably using disk streaming) and recording of two 
channels
into the rec.wav file.
Unfortunately, the commercial software sequencers do not seem to provide
such functionality.


Low-latency is no requirement, nor is realtime sound generation (the
wave files just sit on the HD waiting to be played). Instead, the
playback must be very stable (no clicks and interruptions even in the
presence of heavy graphic processing etc.) and all the channels have to
be in synchrony (start and play back simultaneously or with a
fixed=controllable delay). If needed, the buffers could be very large.
Also, recording does not need to start in exact synchrony with playback,
as long as the delay is fixed.

I use an RME Digi9636 PCI-ADAT interface (which can be used with ASIO2
drivers) and an RME ADI 8 Pro analog/digital interface under Windows XP
SP1.

There *must* be a plethora of programs like this out there --

ANY SUGGESTIONS??

Daniel

-------------------------------------
Dipl. Psych. Daniel Oberfeld-Twistel
University of Mainz
Experimental Psychology

Staudingerweg 9
55099 Mainz
Germany

Tel.   ++49 (0) 6131 39 22423
Fax. ++49 (0) 6131 39 22480