We get many requests for how to play sound to a subject. There are lots of options for how to do this:
Analog outputs to the NI cards
Specialized sound cards that are xPC compatible
Playing sounds from the GUI computer
The attached example is a very simple version of the final option: playing sounds from the GUI computer.
You will need to have Java available in order to run this example. You can obtain the most recent Java from: http://www.java.com.
This example requires a small program to run on the GUI computer. Once you unzip the example files you will need to:
Find the folder you have unzipped the files to using the Windows Explorer.
Hold shift and right click on the folder in Windows Explorer
Select “Open command window here”
At the command prompt type: java -jar toneplayer.jar
At this point you should see: “Ready to play tones…”.
When you run the task, if you have speakers plugged into the GUI computer and they are turned on then you will hear 3 tones played, one each trial.
As the task runs it will create UDP packets that get passed to the Tone Player program. The Tone Player program interprets the packets and creates an appropriate tone.
It must be noted that sound playback in this way is not real-time, but it will be close to real time.
I have provided the Java code that plays the tones, you are free to modify it to your needs. This code could be modified to play *.wav files or possibly even *.mp3. I have not done that. This is purely a proof of concept.
The task was built for Dexterit-E 3.5 and MATLAB 2010a.
Download Tone Player 2