[gonglee]

"Asio4all" improves the sound of computer music, and is free to download - google search will turn it up. Adds smoothness like an upscale piece.

 

[Asmo]

....

 

[donunus]

How do you set up asio with foobar? Is there a plugin or is the asio installer gonna change the sound quality of the entire system using the supported soundcards automatically?

 

[grandenigma1]

Kernel stream for me

however ASIO is also very good

 

[Jon L]

Foobar ASIO plugin is not same as ASIO4All at all. (Flame retardant suit on) I also hear a sound quality difference between Foobar ASIO and Foobar ASIO4All. I prefer the former, but I prefer both over Kernel Streaming.

It's also strange, but upsampling (say to 176.4kHz) does not seem to change the sound much (if any) in ASIO4All, whereas I hear large sound changes in ASIO. I asked the author of ASIO4All whether it really passes 176.4kHz info intact and can't get a real clear answer other than it "supports" it.

 

[dasbin]

If you're hearing large sound differences when upconverting in any case, then there's something wrong with your SRC.

 

[Jon L]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dasbin If you're hearing large sound differences when upconverting in any case, then there's something wrong with your SRC.

I guess that depends on what you mean by "large." If I had to estimate, I would say the difference between 44.1kHz and 176.4kHz is around 10-15% in sound character. When one is very familiar with his songs/system in a high-resolution system, you bet subjective difference is "large." And no, it's not b/c something is wrong with SRC.

 

[Glassman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dasbin If you're hearing large sound differences when upconverting in any case, then there's something wrong with your SRC.

not entirely correct, if you upsample with better precision than the digital filter inside DAC does, then you may expect better sound because you effectively substitue it.. upsampling is happening every time, even if you don't do that in sw and as in everything there are better and worse performing filters.. use whichever is better..

 

[Imyourzero]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jon L Foobar ASIO plugin is not same as ASIO4All at all. (Flame retardant suit on) I also hear a sound quality difference between Foobar ASIO and Foobar ASIO4All. I prefer the former, but I prefer both over Kernel Streaming.

Is there really a difference between ASIO and KS? I remember a thread from a few months ago where someone concluded that sound quality should be the same when using either one since they are both bit-perfect. Now I'm

 

[kunwar]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jon L I guess that depends on what you mean by "large." If I had to estimate, I would say the difference between 44.1kHz and 176.4kHz is around 10-15% in sound character. When one is very familiar with his songs/system in a high-resolution system, you bet subjective difference is "large." And no, it's not b/c something is wrong with SRC.

As Jon L said, having something like a K1000 in the system can't hurt at all, it being particularly merciless with details and the sound coming through.

Also in reply to another query here regarding KS and ASIO differences, the most significant for me is the breakage in sound experienced if 8-10 processes are simultaneously hogging bandwidth from the CPU/RAM.

KS works flawlessly, ASIO tends to breakup.

Also Currently have used both dll and asio4all based setups, sound difference is often perceived in terms of slight extension and clarity (maybe), from the dll version maybe because it is better optimised.
I stick to KS. suits my computing needs nicely

 

[Jon L]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kunwar As Jon L said, having something like a K1000 in the system can't hurt at all, it being particularly merciless with details and the sound coming through. Also in reply to another query here regarding KS and ASIO differences, the most significant for me is the breakage in sound experienced if 8-10 processes are simultaneously hogging bandwidth from the CPU/RAM. KS works flawlessly, ASIO tends to breakup. Also Currently have used both dll and asio4all based setups, sound difference is often perceived in terms of slight extension and clarity (maybe), from the dll version maybe because it is better optimised. I stick to KS. suits my computing needs nicely

You're right about KS stability. It must have a gazillion ms of buffer b/c I've never once heard KS skip/pop/crackle. It took me forever to stabilize ASIO dll b/c it goes beyond setting buffer to max.

First make sure the ASIO buffer is max (1024), but what Really cured my skips/pops was setting a secret(?) thread priority. This isn't the ones you see on Foobar control panel. You have to control-alt-delete to bring up the CPU usage window, select Foobar, right click to find "thread priority" and set it to highest. This cured all my skips/pops, even when using 174.6kHz upsampling.

 

[MD1032]

I like KS. I have no idea why, but it sounds a little better, especially in the bass department, than "Directsound v2.0". It does just like eat CPU though. I was encoding files and it was encoding at 2.1x or something, and when I paused, it jumped to 2.5x in about two seconds but then encoding finished so I didn't get to see how fast it would have gone up to.

 

[FaRKle]

Ok, so I just tried this ASIO4All thing, and the instructions just confuse me. I have a SBA 2ZS, and when it talks about audio software I'm confused. Is it talking about like a config software for the card, or playback software (I use WMP.) I looked on WMP but couldn't find any ASIO thing to select.

I did use the off-line control panel selected my card and moved the buffer slider down, and i went as far down as I could go (didn't hear any crackles.)

 

[sgrossklass]

I'm not aware of WMP supporting ASIO output, so it's not surprising you didn't find anything related.

 

[Twombly]

Your card doesn't support ASIO.