ASIO4All Explanation - Page 30

when you say add your dac , you mean the asio driver...right? I did it and the device channel is without any name in it. only the 32-bit and the left and right.

It should say usb dac or something to that effect....If you right click your volume icon in the taskbar--adjust audio properties--audio--default device---from the drop down, see what your usb dac is named...That should appear in the device in ASIO

it says: usb audio codec. but i don't know exactly how i supposed to get it in there. how can it be that i can listening to music through the dac without that name appearing in the list? do you think it's related?
maybe i should uninstall and reinstall the asio all over again.
do you think i should do the same thing with my dac? maybe it is not configured right in windows?

Set it as default in your audio properties. Go into Foobar ASIO4ALL, double click ASIO4ALL and see if it appears as a device. If so, map left and right on the dac. If not, add new in ASIO4ALL and see if appears then......Let's try this step by step to zero in on the prob....

well..I set the USB AUDIO CODEC, which i hope means my dac, as default in windows audio properties instea of my realtek HD audio output which is my onboard soundcard.
I went to foobar,and deleted the ASIO4ALL V2 from the virtual devices list and pressed "Add new" and added it again but it is still only gives me the bit rate and the mappping. in the device channel colums nothing seems to appear.

Okay.....it's not being recognized.....what do you see when you hit configure above the channel window?

it takes me to the asio settings.

by any chance do you see your dac in the wdm device?

If not just close foobar, turn your dac off then on then open foobar and see if it recognizes it in ASIO4ALL...
You have to isolate the prob and get your device recognized.

yes,i can see my dac in the wdm list. it is called usb audio codec.
I can see the usb audio codec in the wdm list even when the dac is off.
the "usb audio codec" is the dac's driver in windows, that way windows can "see" it. maybe the whole dac installation is wrong...
I think i will try to delete this usb audio codec from the windows driver list and hook my dac to the computer so it will install the driver again.

and than maybe i will reinstall the asio all over again also.

Can anyone explain clearly for me the meaning of buffer size? What's the difference between 512 samples and 2048 sample?

Buffer size in the driver has to do with the amount of latency that will be caused by the driver and also the amount of CPU load that will be caused by the driver. A larger buffer size will cause more latency but reduce the CPU load.

People who do recording or live performances through a computer interface care about latency. They generally want the latency as low as possible so there is no noticeable delay between what they do and what they hear. People who just use a computer interface to play music (like us) don't really care much about low latency. We just want enough of a buffer so that there are no drop-outs or glitches in the audio. If the buffer causes a longer latency that is not an important issue.

In addition to the buffer within the driver, applications like Foobar and others also include their own buffer for audio. That buffers audio within the application and also adds latency.

For audio playback I max the buffer within the driver and set a reasonable buffer in the playback application (Foobar, J River Media Center, etc.).

Sound On Sound has an article on latency and talks about the buffer with the driver and how it adds to latency: Optimising The Latency Of Your PC Audio Interface

If you mean driver buffers then, basically, difference between 512 samples and 2048 samples is that you get 1536 samples longer delay with the bigger value. Good point is that the delay happens only when the first buffer filling is done).
What this means in practise is, that delay with 512 samples is around 11.6 ms and with the 2048 samples around 46,4ms ... @ 44.1kHz (conversion formula is "sample buffer size"/samplerate (kHz)).
You sure notice this difference when pressed the play button on your playback software.

Anyway, in playback situation, sample buffer size is not important unless you go to too small values which starts cause distortion in audio playback and drop-outs for playback because of the system (software/driver/OS data path/CPU) can't handle "realtime" processing (remember that the CPU time is shared with all running processes... system audio "architecture" may be quite complex as it is on Windows (Compared to lets say ASIO arcihtecture) ... ).

jiitee

Excellent explanations. Thanks guys.

This is a great thread. While the original poster has screen grabs from an older version, the steps are similar for the latest version (2.10 beta).

I managed to set up ASIO4ALL on my USB Dac in 5 minutes!

in case it hasn't beeen said, you can easily disable the tasktray icon in the latest beta: