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Re: ASIO4ALL

Posted by Lynn (A) on March 25, 2006 at 12:02:52

In Reply to: Re: ASIO4ALL posted by drwkng on March 25, 2006 at 02:53:41:

You are correct. ASIO4ALL was written for people who wanted to use software that requires ASIO, but the native sound card driver for the their hardware did not support ASIO.

So, ASIO4ALL looks to the software (in this case playback software) like a hardware driver so that you can select it in the software. Then, ASIO will use Windows APIs to talk to the real sound card driver to route the information from the playback software.

If you do not select ASIO4ALL in the playback software it is not in the datastream at all, so the playback software will then be directly interacting with Windows API and the native hardware driver.

You can either have the following pathways to the sound card:

Full ASIO Support:

Player (selecting ASIO) --> Native Soundcard Driver Supporting ASIO --> Sound Card

Pseudo-ASIO Support Using ASIO4ALL:

Player (selecting ASIO4ALL) --> ASIO4ALL--> Windows API --> Native Sound Card Driver Supporting WDM --> Sound Card

No ASIO
Player (Selecting Any Other Method) --> Windows API --> Native Sound Driver --> Sound Card

In some cases the Windows API will use Kmixer, but if the Kernel Streaming API is used Kmixer is bypassed. ASIO4ALL uses the Windows Kernel Streaming API to bypass Kmixer, assuming your sound card will support Kernel Streaming.

However, if you have not selected ASIO4ALL in your playback software it is not active at all. Quoting for the ASIO4ALL site: 'ASIO4ALL is a user mode component that is neither running nor even being loaded unless you start an ASIO host application.'. In this case, the host application is the playback software.

Please see the following link for more info on ASIO4ALL.

• http://www.asio4all.com/   (Open in New Window)

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Schiit Audio

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