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ASIO, sound cards, and latency. yeeeeesh.

mmbongo

mmbongo

I have too many basses.
Inactive
Aug 5, 2009
25,372
30,975
54
Upstate, South Carolina
#1
Good Lord I should learn to just leave well enough alone.

I use an old Sound Blaster X-Fi card with Windows 7. My bass goes to a mixer, then to the line input of the X-Fi. Works great. In fact I have two identical setups like this.

So here comes the upgrade itch. Been kinda wanting to try a new sound card anyway, and I kinda wanted Windows 10, and my old X-Fi does not work with 10. So, I get a high end Asus card because they seem to be better than Sound Blasters. Now I have this huge latency on the line in. As I'm reading, I find out about this ASIO thing, and that's why my old X-Fi worked, and Asus does not support it. So back goes the Asus.

So I have to stick with sound Blaster. Audigy Fx arrives! Huge latency. Crap. Oh, does not support ASIO. Thanks Creative.

So my 3rd card arrives today, Audigy Rx which is ASIO certified. HUGE LATENCY. What gives with the latency on the line input? I know the ASIO is working, because Sound Forge threw up an error on the other cards that said ASIO was not supported, but with the Rx installed I do not get the error.

So how does one enable ASIO for the line input of the new Sound Blasters?

I'm thinking of just going back to 7 and the X-Fi as I don't think the new card sounds any better anyway.
 
#3
silky smoove said:
Have you tried ASIO4ALL?
Click to expand...

I have not, but I have researched it a little bit. The thing that confuses me about it is that I keep reading that you have to configure it using your 'audio application software' which I assume means the recording software that is being used. Problem is, I don't have any. With my old sound card, once Windows starts, I can hear my line input with no latency. There is no other software involved.
 
#7
If your DAW has WDM/KS support try it. Sonar works great with WDM/KS

If your DAW doesn't support WDM/KS then try ASIO. Hopefully your card came with ASIO drivers.
If it didn't then ASIO4ALL wraps the WDM/KS driver so it can talk to DAWs that speak ASIO
ASIO4ALL is so good that many sound card makers don't bother making their own ASIO drivers anymore and tell users to use ASIO4ALL is they need ASIO.

For WDM/KS or ASIO don't use too big of a sample buffer, start at something small like 64. If you get some noise bump it up to say 128.

Don't use MME drivers - which is usually the default for windows apps because it's universally supported. It's full of latency but works everywhere.
 
#8
seamonkey said:
If your DAW has WDM/KS support try it. Sonar works great with WDM/KS

If your DAW doesn't support WDM/KS then try ASIO. Hopefully your card came with ASIO drivers.
If it didn't then ASIO4ALL wraps the WDM/KS driver so it can talk to DAWs that speak ASIO
ASIO4ALL is so good that many sound card makers don't bother making their own ASIO drivers anymore and tell users to use ASIO4ALL is they need ASIO.

For WDM/KS or ASIO don't use too big of a sample buffer, start at something small like 64. If you get some noise bump it up to say 128.

Don't use MME drivers - which is usually the default for windows apps because it's universally supported. It's full of latency but works everywhere.
Click to expand...

I don't use a DAW, assuming that's a digital recording software. I just start Windows and I'm listening to my bass via the line input. No software needed.

I tried the ASIO4ALL and it didn't really do anything. There's no application or anything to start for it.

For now stuck my old sound card back in and I'm back in business. This just appears to be a problem with modern sound cards being crap.

I'm also starting to thing I've got a sweeeet setup for bass practice that nobody else can do because of my desire to hang on to these older sound cards :) After reading through tons of tutorials on some incredibly complicated setups that people are rigging up just to hear/record bass on their computer, my setup is about as simple as it gets. DI pedal into a little mixer, mixer out to computer line in. Done.
 
#9
Modern interfaces aren't crap, you just need one that does what you're after, which to me sounds like a monitor path that takes place prior to the AD stage. If you pass the AD there will be latency on any interface, new or old. Newer ones tend to have better latency performance. As an example; I have a Mackie Onyx Blackbird kicking around that allows for pre-AD monitoring. It's hardly new, but it's far from old and its post-AD latency is perfectly acceptable even on a modest system, but if I really need I can monitor pre-AD quickly and easily. No DAW required.
 
#10
silky smoove said:
Modern interfaces aren't crap, you just need one that does what you're after, which to me sounds like a monitor path that takes place prior to the AD stage. If you pass the AD there will be latency on any interface, new or old. Newer ones tend to have better latency performance. As an example; I have a Mackie Onyx Blackbird kicking around that allows for pre-AD monitoring. It's hardly new, but it's far from old and its post-AD latency is perfectly acceptable even on a modest system, but if I really need I can monitor pre-AD quickly and easily. No DAW required.
Click to expand...

I'm sure an interface would be better, but I'm not really interested in going that route right now. When I said modern sound cards were crap, I was more referring to the Asus and Sound Blaster cards I've tried the past few weeks. And I say they are crap because of their latency on the line input, which I never had a problem with older Sound Blaster X-Fi and Turtle Beach sound cards. I had to give up my Turtle Beach when Windows 7 came around :(
 
#12
silky smoove said:
In the way that you're using a sound card, what is the practical difference between it and an interface? That's what I was implying. Should have been more clear on my end.
Click to expand...

Not sure, I've never really looked into an interface but that may be the way I have to go to get away from having to use an old outdated sound card. Would an interface require any additional software just to be able to hear my bass through the computer? What I like about my setup now is that since it goes through the line input, it's always there. So I play along to YouTube videos....or any web browser based audio...Google Play, Spotify, anything. Plus my own MP3's via Media Player or VLC. If I want to record I just fire up Sound Forge and hit the record button.
 
#13
I sometimes use the built in audio on my laptop. It works fine. Using Ableton and ASIO4ALL or Cakewalk and WDM/KS

New sounds cards, and built in sound on PC these days does work great, it's just not as convenient for the connectons to musical gear.

Using a DAW makes it easier to get things set up. Most interfaces come with some free version of a DAW.
DAW support and forums can provide a lot specific setup guidance if you have a problem.
 
#16
There's a guy out there who actually wrote updated drivers for x-fi cards under Win 10 -- I'm using them with my pci x-fi on my Win10 x64 system and they're great. I haven't looked for the feature your talking about, but all the x-fi specific effects and things work, so i bet everything does.
I know it's a little strange/seems fishy, but look em up! Lots of folks are using them:
Daniel_K's Official Blog
 

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