2007 Sep 18 - Tue

DirectSound Error 88780078

Sometime towards the end of July, I installed Windows XP latest sound stuff (Windows Media, DirectSound, etc), version 10 I think. I had been putting it off for a while. I had heard about licensing issues, codec problems, and such. In a moment of weakness, I clicked the Windows Update button and installed it. What a pain.

WinAmp plays fine most of the time. At some point in time, when it isnt' playing, and I 'do something', I have no idea yet, and when I go back to playing WinAmp, I'll get a message like:

Bad DirectSound Driver. Please install proper drivers or select another device in configuration. Error code: 88780078

Most of the time, I reboot my computer, and things magically fix themselves.

Upon further searching for solutions, someone pointed out a possible simple fix for my problmem of the DirectSound 88780078 problem:

• Right click on My Computer
• Manage
• Device Manager
• go down to where the exclamation point is
• Right click to Disable, then Enable it.

In this case, it solved my problem. Now I'd like to know how it breaks randomly in the first place. Some have said it has to do with VMWare. I do have VMWare workstation installed, but hasn't been running for a while.

Any suggestions?

I did come across Microsoft Knowledge Base article 29030. You can run a Windows Installer Cleanup Utility. It's first screen shows, ironically, "Welcome to the Windows Installer Clean Up Installation Wizard". When running the application after the installation, I don't see anything having to do with sound, so just cancelled out.

There are more interesting solutions at TechSpot.

2006 Nov 16 - Thu

Sennheiser HD 600

A little while I was involved in a battle of stereos. I moved into a new apartment, one with kinda thin walls. I was without a music center at the time. My neighbor would play his TV/Stereo/Whatever and I'd hear the bass and side affects. I should have done the right thing and talked to him at that moment. But naah. I decided to play along. I picked up a 6 speaker Logitech system. My neighbor is an early to bed, early to rise sort of guy. But he would go to bed with his system on and let it play through the night. Aargh. I started coming home late at night and turning my system up. Half way through the night, I'd turn my off. He must have turned his down in the meantime as well. We kinda reached a happy medium. Then one day he turned his on at 6 in the morning. That got me to the point of getting on speaking terms with the guy.

So we reached a compromise. Naturally. He'd keep his down and I'll keep mine down.

However, keeping my music down just doesn't give me the quality and depth I'd like to see, or rather, hear. So a search for a good set of headphones ensued. I ultimatedly landed on HeadRoom's web site. They do high fidelity headphones. They bring everything together in one place. And talk about their products. No holds barred.

I ended up choosing the Sennheiser HD 600 series. I don't own a $2500 CD player, but I'll play high quality MP3's. From a audioholics perspective, I can't really say by how much they beat the pants off anything else in the audio sphere, but I will attest to a few things. But, yes, they do deliver great sound. One obvious physical characteristic is their open air concept. As such, they aren't good for completely isolating you from someone close to you. But they keep you quiet from someone in the next room. But that same characteristic redeems itself in another manner. They let your ears breath. They also let in some ambient sound just to balance things out.

The things are darn light as well. Couple that fact with the design of their open air concept, I can go for two, four, and sometimes six hour extended listening tours while working through simulations or software development projects.

Just thinking about their sound quality again. I'm wearing them as I write this. It is hard to get the true heart rending bass out of them I can get from my Logitech surrounders, but the headphones are still respectable in that regards. The midrange and highs are indeed superb.

To go along with them, I splurged on the 15' Cardas Replacement Cable. I can walk around my bedroom, sit at my desk, or recline in bed with them watching a movie.

I'll go into more details in another entry, but I also picked up the HeadRoom Total BitHead amplifier to drive the headphones.

All in all, I'm really happy with this setup. The only change would be to try out the HD 650 headphones and see if they are as good as they say they are.