ASIO4All Explanation - Page 7

Another "Thank you, I appreciate it" post and I will come to your house and stab you with a fork.

@ Cooperpwc
I am researching the influence of replaygain of the signal right now. I suppose it's the same as regular volume change and hence will lead to decay of SQ.

I am using the DT880s as well. And I am able to hear the difference.

@ Vitor Machado
So I suggest you just keep everything maxed and don't worry about it anymore. It's way easier when there is an analog volume control.

I will break into your house at night, crawl under your bed and stab you with the nearest blunt object. I might encourage your dog to do so as well. I'll think about that.

.....

At least I didn't write the whole piece for nothing.

Oh well, I've still got it linked in my signature. So people will be able to go here anyway. I hope it will be around for a little while though.

I made the final edit right now. I will not keep on editing unless it's requested by someone. The link to this thread can still be found in my link.

Cheers.

Native ASIO support is more direct than ASIO4All. ASIO4All uses a wrapper, a virtual device. Signals will go from your audioplayer to the wrapper and than to the actual ASIO. Native ASIO and kernel streaming will go straight to ASIO. In my opinion the best way is to get as few devices as possible between the digital signal and the DAC. It does not matter whether these devices are virtual or not. In general it's like this. (I am not saying resampling or whatever SRC is bad. It can be very useful.)

You can deduce from this that native ASIO is better. The main problem with direct ASIO or kernel streaming is that you lose a lot of control. You can't change anything anymore. With ASIO4All you can change the signal as much as the Offline configuration allows. With direct ASIO you can't change anything on the fly. Because of this direct ASIO will always crash easier than a wrapper would. ( this shouldn't happen, but since software always contains bugs it does)

A problem with kernel streaming it does not work with a lot of devices. This is because of the latency. (which can't be changed on the fly - or sometimes not at all)

The solution:
The best way to do this would be use USB-ASIO. This program will install usb drivers which will allow direct ASIO even if the device you are using does not have native ASIO support. This program was invented by Steinberg ( from Cubase) and works really well. The main problem with this program is that it is not free.

I hope this answers your question quite well.

Cheers

Edit:
So in plain English: There is AFAIK no audible difference between direct ASIO and an ASIO wrapper. I tried ABXing this and I couldn't hear any difference. ( I can hear the difference between v0 and lossless - I'm not telling you this to brag, just to make myself look like a credible source ) I do not know anyone who has been able to hear the difference either.

That's correct. Please note that everything I say here is not exactly correct, but it's slightly simplyfied. You can tell this to your neighbours and friends, you can even tell anyone who is working in a studio recording music and using Cubase, but PLEASE don't tell Mr Steinberg about it because he would start laughing at you when you describe it to him this way.

You are welcome.

This is quite common. I've got a Porta Corda MkIII-USB and that will also play louder with ASIO than without. Does this mean my USB/DAC sucks? Nah..

The turtle beach card isn't that bad, but a USB/DAC would do better. Something like the Total Bithead is doing better just because you can amplify it as well as get a better signal. It's a completely different price range though, so differences in SQ can be expected.

Just a USB-DAC(without the amp) will make it sound better for the reason that it's a better DAC. Once again it's in a completely different price range.

There are people who are way more knowledgeable on the amp & dac thing so I would ask it in the amps subforum if you are really intending to buy something like that. I think it will increase the SQ quite a lot since the 580 is a pretty high impedance headphone. (300 Ohm I think? - not sure)

Cheers.

Edit: nevermind the last part of this post. I missed the headsave there.