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ASIO Can Be Tricky......

Posted by Todd Krieger (A) on January 20, 2007 at 19:14:11

In Reply to: I'm doing better with win amp "direct sound out" than with ASIO posted by Triodeuser on January 20, 2007 at 18:20:35:

The key to getting ASIO working properly is you have to first get Winamp to communicate with an ASIO wrapper (like AISO4ALL), and then be sure the Windows Sound settings connect to a sound card *other* than the one used by ASIO (which may require temporary installation of new hardware like a USB DAC, and then set the Windows Sound to point to that new location- Other apps using the Windows sound will become inaudible, and may lock up if that other device is not running). The ASIO wrapper provides a bypass connection around Windows sound.

You can tell if ASIO is working when you adjust the volume slider on Winamp, the intensity remains constant. The only volume you can use is an external volume control or one that the player uses that is *not* tied into Windows sound. (You cannot direct feed to an amplifier with ASIO based playback.)

The problem with Windows sound, aka "K-Mixer", is the output sample rate is always 48 kHz, so the digital playback utilized by Windows uses asynchronous sample-rate conversion. Which was my sole motivation to go the ASIO route. (But this in itself is a separate problem to the one dealing with high-rez playback. If anything, Windows Sound should work best with high-rez, provided it switches to synchronous conversion. Which may not be the case.)

ASIO is not implemented properly if the Windows K-Mixer is also tied to the same sound processor/card. A common mistake that I originally did. The key is whether you can get sound where the media player's volume control becomes disabled, which is tied to the master Windows Sound volume. If the volume is still operational via the player, the Windows K-Mixer is still in the loop.

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