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I was skeptical, but ASIO made a huge difference - Page 2

post #16 of 74
4/8/08 at 11:28am
I suspect it has something to do with volume.
It is hard to maintain the exactly volume when you do blind testing...
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post #17 of 74
4/8/08 at 1:03pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by NumpXP View Post
my foobar stops if it;s trying to play songs with different sampling rate. is there any way to make it skip those songs rather than give error and stop the playback?
If you have music at different sample rates, you might throw a resampler into your DSP chain and set it to 44.1 khz. Either that, or not use ASIO, or not have those songs on the playlist.
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post #18 of 74
4/8/08 at 8:57pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dept_of_Alchemy View Post
I always suspected that ASIO's performance gain comes mostly from it being louder. My experience with ASIO was favorable initially until I realized that I can't tell the difference when I use DirectSound in WinAmp with max volume on all the controls.

- DoA
Am I wrong in thinking this makes sense? The only value in ASIO for audio playback is that it allows bitperfect playback that has not been subjected to poor quality resampling 44.1 to 48 by most sound cards. When you max the volume sliders on some soundcards that support native bitperfect then you end up bypassing the reampling and have bitperfect regardless of output mode.
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post #19 of 74
4/9/08 at 12:15pm
Just curious did you take the DTS or HDCD test to confirm that you are actually running bit-perfect?

If I hadn't use this test as a guage I would have never gotten the ASIO to work properly (bit-perfect) with my Emu 0404 PCI soundcard. I can send you a session file if yours is the pci version.
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post #20 of 74
4/13/08 at 11:14pm
If you think ASIO makes a difference when listening to music, try recording some, without.

Hell is a very real place.
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post #21 of 74
4/14/08 at 1:26am
any advantages of using asio when i am using a usb dac? is there a need to use asio with usb dac?
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post #22 of 74
4/17/08 at 6:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by tjumper78 View Post
any advantages of using asio when i am using a usb dac? is there a need to use asio with usb dac?
I think what you are asking is if it would make a difference. The answer is yes if you are using Windows XP. ASIO bypasses functions in XP that have a degrading effect on sound output. All this happens before your DAC gets any signal. In more real terms the volume bar in your favorite music player will no longer work which will remove any distorting and noise effects they had on your music from unnecessary sampling. You can still use Windows main volume control though.

Another good thing about ASIO is that it is not a system-wide thing. If you use Winamp or Foobar then you install a ASIO plugin for those programs and only those programs use ASIO. The rest of your system sticks to the default method (which means they can still use their own volume control sliders).

Caveat: CPU usage goes way up when using ASIO. When I use it with Winamp its CPU usage doubles. So if you already have a slow system ASIO might not be for you.

How does it sound? I didn't notice much of a difference when listening to 320 bitrate MP4/ACC files. Maybe a smidgen less distortion but I had to have my clinical ears on.

I did notice a big difference when listening to CDs on my computer though. CDs sound way better with ASIO. However since I rarely listen to CDs from my computer (got a CD player for that) I didn't see any reason in having another resource hog on my system.
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post #23 of 74
4/17/08 at 6:48pm
Sorry for being a noob, but i simply cannot tell the difference between normal output and ASIO. Something wrong with my ears? Ive A-B tested the two back and forth and they sound the same.

btw, im using vista32 > foobar v0.9.5.1 > 320kbps AAC > emu 0202 > SR60's
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post #24 of 74
4/17/08 at 7:48pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dougboy View Post
Sorry for being a noob, but i simply cannot tell the difference between normal output and ASIO. Something wrong with my ears? Ive A-B tested the two back and forth and they sound the same.

btw, im using vista32 > foobar v0.9.5.1 > 320kbps AAC > emu 0202 > SR60's
Vista is far less offensive than XP when it comes to unnecessary sampling. It handles things alot differently. There probably isn't any real difference at all and that why you don't notice it.

I can't tell the difference between ASIO and non ASIO on XP when using 320kbps files. So you are not alone.
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post #25 of 74
4/18/08 at 12:17am
Which volume sliders do and don't work? I thought only the windows WAVE slider didn't change anything with ASIO, but the main system slider and the slider in the program (say, winamp) still should work?
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post #26 of 74
4/18/08 at 1:11am
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheMarchingMule View Post
Okay, you guys convinced me to tinker around with the ASIO foobar2000 plug-in until I got it working...

Wow, that is a noticeable difference! So glad I finally took the time to get it working!

Too bad most of the time I need to use iTunes though...
i remember reading that there's a way of getting itunes to get its audio data from foobar (ie have foobar run in the background every single time you run itunes). Haven't really looked into it myself since i'm not an itunes fan =P
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post #27 of 74
4/18/08 at 2:44am
Quote:
Originally Posted by n3rdling View Post
Which volume sliders do and don't work? I thought only the windows WAVE slider didn't change anything with ASIO, but the main system slider and the slider in the program (say, winamp) still should work?
When I run ASIO only the main system slider works. The wave slider and the program (winamp) slider are disabled. Its not a big deal though because its sounds almost like the wave slider is turned to the max, so I don't need to turn my amp up as loud as I do without ASIO.
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post #28 of 74
4/18/08 at 9:55am
i can still control the sound with the volume slider of winamp.
am i doing something wrong here?
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post #29 of 74
4/18/08 at 8:53pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by tjumper78 View Post
i can still control the sound with the volume slider of winamp.
am i doing something wrong here?
I needed two things to get mine going.

First download a program called ASIO4ALL
Second download the Winamp ASIO plugin.

1. Install ASIO4ALL
2. Start the ASIO4 ALL program
3. Your DAC should be listed as one of the sound output devices in ASIO4ALL, select your DAC from the list. You don't have to mess with any of the other settings if you don't want to.
4. Configure the Winamp ASIO plugin to use ASIO4ALL

You should be all set.
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post #30 of 74
4/20/08 at 12:04pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ciphercomplete View Post
I needed two things to get mine going.

First download a program called ASIO4ALL
Second download the Winamp ASIO plugin.

1. Install ASIO4ALL
2. Start the ASIO4 ALL program
3. Your DAC should be listed as one of the sound output devices in ASIO4ALL, select your DAC from the list. You don't have to mess with any of the other settings if you don't want to.
4. Configure the Winamp ASIO plugin to use ASIO4ALL

You should be all set.
i've done the same thing, and i've been using this for a while.
i just noticed someone saying that i should not be able to control the volume with the winamp volume slide bar. however, i still can control the volume by sliding the winamp volume bar.
is anything wrong with my setup?
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