Not too long before I discovered Mudcat I spent some considerable effort for checking out opportunities of using my computer as a sound studio. I gave up (for now!) because I couldn't find a way to solve one problem (maybe two). So may I pass this question to you:

Does anybody know a way to play a WAV file while recording a second one in a synchronized manner? That should mean that sample No 1 of the recorded file is taken at the time sample No 1 of the played file is output and so on.

You might understand what I'm thinking of: This would allow me for recording my own songs with any accompaniment I like in virtual CD quality, because neither creating music to be played nor recording some nor mixing nor applying effects is a problem any more, the only problem left is synchronization.

This MUST be possible, but did anybody think of writing some software like that? I would have done it myself but I failed, simply because I could not find any convenient way to control my sound card by a normal (i.e. DOS) C program. So pointing out some way to do that could also solve the problem for me, and I would be pleased to donate the result to the public.

The second problem - although much less critical: Does anybody know a way to simply capture the output of a MIDI player and direct it to a WAV file? (Some special players allow for writing to WAV files instead of playing, but these are special players, and you might not like the sound they are creating.) This also MUST be possible, because at least the sound card must know what amplitude is to be output at some given time, and the problem is only retrieving that and writing it to a file.

Any hints?

Joerg