Like David and John have reported this works with most multi-channel sound cards.  However, When I'm doing something like streaming audio with JAWS and Word running at the same time, speech performance in Word can lag a bit.  This is probably due to having IE, Real Player, JAWS, and Word all running together.  More than likely a lack of resource issue causing the lag in speech performance I suspect.  I wouldn't plan to do this on anything less than a Pentium 3 800 or so with sufficient RAM etc.

I am using a Dell Latitude C-800 notebook with a Pentium 850 with 512 RAM and a 5,400 RPM (fast for a notebook) hard drive and get this performance lag so you might want to take this into consideration.

Jeff Senge

-----Original Message-----
From: John Gardner [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2002 5:44 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: using applications with JAWS while running real audio


It depends on your sound card.  If you try to play two wave files with some
sound cards, your computer crashes.  However most sound cards now work just
fine with multiple inputs.  Real audio is just superimposed on the
speech.  Both use both speakers.

At least that's the way my computer works.  Today.  I won't predict tomorrow.

John
At 08:20 PM 4/6/02 -0500, you wrote:
>Hello...Is it possible to have real Audio running in the background and,
>for example, work on a Word document using JAWS? I would assme if this is
>possible, JFW would output through one speaker, and real audio through the
>other.
>
>I know it is probably not possible on my current laptop, so suggestions as
>to the optimal tech specs needed if this is possible would be appreciated
>since I will be upgrading shortly.
>
>Thanks,
>Jennison

John Gardner
Professor and Director, Science Access Project
Department of Physics
Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR 97331-6507
tel: (541) 737 3278
FAX: (541) 737 1683
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
URL: http://dots.physics.orst.edu