Playing sound with low latency and jitter in OpenSesame

OpenSesame is probably the greatest software for creating experiments for psychology, neuroscience, etc. It has a graphical interface for the most useful components, such as playing a sound file (sampler) or creating own tone (synth). However, the way these components are implemented (using PyGame) may not provide good temporal accuracy (latency), meaning the sound can be delayed, which might not be that bad. What can be very bad (for things like ERPs, etc.) is potentially bad temporal precision (jitter), meaning that the delay may vary from trial to trial. You should read about these matters here.

In this post I want to show how I managed to significantly improve the timing of my auditory stimuli using inline code, PyAudio and ASIO API, even using onboard sound card in Windows 7.

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E-Prime tips and tricks

Personal E-Prime knowledge base of one experimental psychology PhD student, or, what I’ve found useful to know during my learning experience with E-Prime… If you find something that is wrong or want to add more tips, please absolutely do that (in the comments below)!

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