I've been searching the web for information about how to set up the AlienFX Media Plugin for WMP or Itunes for the past week. I keep finding threads that lead me to the same video links on YouTube. One of which is useful enough to show how to manually insert the plugin into the proper directory to make it available in you favorite player, however, in the most recent update of the installer, I think Dell took care of that problem. The others just show off somebody's light show, but give no instruction as to how they were setup. Fascinating, maybe even inspiring, but not at all helpful.
Anyway, my plugin is working and I understand the basics, but by accident I found a way to have different colors in separate zones for each frequency range using Windows Media Player 12. My problem is I don't know what I did to make it work that way. At 16:100Hz I have the keyboard lighting Violet, Cyan, Black(Off), and Cyan from left to right on my M17X R2, while the left speaker is yellow, touchpad and right speaker are violet. The "ALIENWARE" logo and Alienhead (on the lid) are also violet. The rest of the frequencies are harder to track but I have some yellow, red, green, blue, white, and orange mixed up with some zones going black as well. The plugin only monitors 5 frequency ranges, and as you can see I am using more than five colors. What I think is allowing me to have this configuration has something to do with the check boxes for three extra zones labeled "Media X" (where X is 1, 2, or 3), but I haven't found any details that explain these extra zones or how they are implemented.
I have also noticed that each time I try to tweak it and change the colors for a frequency I have a greater variation in color for each zone that I've readjusted. Some of my zones seem to cycle through the entire rainbow during each beat at this point. So it would seem as though my choices are being layered over one another. In Itunes, I cannot replicate the same effects. I get one color at each frequency at that's it. Which is why I ask the question, "Does anybody know how to configure the advanced settings of the AlienFX Media Plugin?"
If I were a competent programmer I would try to design a plugin with a more comprehensive control panel that let you select each zone's color individually per frequency and device. I can imagine one that graphically displays each zone and a color wheel, just like the one for Windows. Set the frequency, select the device and click the zone, assign a color for each zone, and repeat for the remaining frequencies. Perhaps even the pulse function could be added or a strobe effect. Additionally, it would be nice to allow the standard on screen visualizations to run simultaneously or some kind of morphing version of the Alienhead to make it more interesting. I currently open Media Center and Media Player together, Set the visualization mode in media player and select the playlist in Media Center. This way I get the AlienFX Light show while Media Center displays the Track Info and Album Art with the moving collage of the whole library in the background.