[junkimchi]

I recently have been toying around with ASIO and I have some questions about the whole process.

First of all here is my setup

Windows 7 -> Mediamonkey/Winamp -> FLAC -> Go-vibe Petite / Zero DAC USB -> Sennheiser HD650

Now I have been just pluggin in the USB devices into my computer and they sounded fine but after reading it seemed like there are apprently some flaws in not using ASIO drivers and just using directsound.

Here are my questions:

1. Is there a flaw somewhere in this setup? Is there any way I can improve the sound of my current setup without additional hardware?

 

[junkimchi]

bump

 

[Roseval]

There are a couple of options.

If you don’t do anything at all, you are using DS
In this case check the settings in your sound panel like sample rate, speaker configuration (USB is by default set to laptop), etc
More details: The Well Tempered Computer

If you are using ASIO, you are bypassing the entire WIN audio.
This of course requires your hardware (DAC) to support ASIO.

In case of VISTA/WIN7 a common method is to use WASAPI.
This bypasses all of the DSP done by DS.
Pretty much like ASIO
However, as WASAPI communicates directly with the DAC, the DAC must be able to play the bit depth and sample rate supplied
More details: The Well Tempered Computer