What is the difference between wdm drivers and asio drivers??? I have used both with my m-audio 18/14 firewire and sonar 4 producer. is one better than the other??I don't hear much difference in the sound.
In theory WDM should be better, because it's a more direct interface with the OS or something like that. In practice, while WDM worked perfectly on my Motu 828mkII for the audio data, I had absolutely terrible MIDI latency...like almost a full second. As soon as I switched over to the Motu's ASIO drivers, the latency went down to a couple of miliseconds and I have had no trouble with audio.
I used WDM for quite awhile with Sonar Homestudio before I tried the ASIO, once I tried ASIO I can't see going back, not that I noticed much, if any difference in quality, but it seems to me that it made the I/O options easier to understand/use, but I'm a noob so it wouldn't have taken much.
If WDM and ASIO equally good programmed (if possible), then WDM should be the fastest one, it's just a newer standard (therefore more optimized, to a google-search) and gives more direct access to the hardware, as pointed out by sile2001.
However, I believe that most driver-programmers put more effort into their ASIO-drivers than their WDM-drivers just because ASIO is supposed to be more "pro". Well, that's just a feeling I have...
In my case, with a Presonus Inspire 1394 interface and Sonar 4, I started with the WDM. With that driver I could not get Sonar to do 24bit 96K recording. I switched to ASIO and the 24/96 worked. I've stayed with ASIO ever since.
Back when I used M-Audio, I used WDM. With my E-mu, I use ASIO. It's all on not just a card by card (and often even system by system) basis. What works best works best, you know?
Or if you are like me (Motu 896 & 896HD) ASIO only can access 1 interface so I have to use WDM but, I've got 16 channels at a time no problem. Of course my midi is a seperate box on the usb port.
When I used WMD I mean WDM with my emu0404 the sound seemed to sound quieter. when I used midi the volume would be very low even when I had the volume all the way up. but when I switched to ASIO the volume went up to par with everything else.