ASIO4ALL Vs. Direct Sound or others

[R4LRetro]

Can someone explain the difference? And which is preferred? In Reaper in my settings, I can choose ASIO, WaveOut, DirectSound, and Dummy Out. ASIO sounds the best, but that could be because I'm not using optimal settings?

 

[Bobbsy]

Well, I'll try.

ASIO stands for "Audio Stream In/Out" and is a protocol for audio drivers developed by Steinberg. It's main advantage is very low latency to minimise the problems we hear about so often of lag between input and the monitoring of output when you're trying to monitor what you record.

Not all sound device, especially cheap built in sound cards, can handle ASIO though. Most use Windows WDM drivers which are okay for simple Youtube playback and such but fairly useless for any serious recording.

ASIO4ALL is a very useful little bit of software which lets you pretend that devices with WDM drivers are working under ASIO. ASIO4ALL doesn't mess with or change your WDM drivers, it just works around them.

"WaveOut" and "Directsound" are other APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) letting Windows Operating systems play digital sounds...WaveOut is the oldest and pretty limited in facilities with Directsound being a slightly more modern one, supporting multiple streams and hardware acceleration. However, these again are aimed more at "basic" computer tasks and gaming, not serious recording and mixing.

Dummy out I have no idea about!

Anyhow, to answer your question, for home studio working, I'd stick to ASIO if you sound card supports it or ASIO4ALL if it doesn't. (And, if it doesn't, I'd be budgeting for a better sound card as your next upgrade.)

Bob

 

[nolimore]

I use x2 audio drivers. ASIO4All and a Behringer ASIO driver, exclusively for the UGC-102 USB DI/pre-amp device. I switched early on from windows standard ASIO to ASIO4ALL.

I have a systems programming background too, so I can understand what goes on under the bonnet a little.

The difference?

It is to do with the 'design' of the drivers. If you look further some drivers will use different algorithms to others and some are more efficient than others. This is more in the case between drivers that use the same Input/Output interfaces e.g. Windows standard ASIO and ASIO4ALL. ASIO4ALL performs more efficiently than the windows standard ASIO, they are different because they use different algorithms and ASIO4ALL does the job better than ASIO. There is less latency with ASIO4ALL. ASIO4ALL also gives you an option to 'tweek' with input/output buffers (buffers are temporary memory storage areas, to control and regulate consistency, so latency is reduced). Each driver has its own way to achieve optimum efficiency; your favourite one is going to be your choice.

 

[R4LRetro]

Ahh OK that clarifies things... I'm going through tweak's guides right now and just read on it and I get it now. ASIO4ALL is fine on my laptop so I guess I'll be sticking with it! I know how latency works, I just didn't know if I should be using ASIO4ALL or something else, but thanks for clearing it up dudes.