M-Audio calls this an update? ( new audiophile USB driver)

[granodemostasa]

Okay, so i download the new driver (just released) to find that the sound is mutted, fuzy and hissy. ASIO has diognozed the audiophile as "beyond logic," while i am beginning to suspect microsoft. in the mean time i'm trying to download the new live lite 5 to find out if it will help. anyone else experiencing problems with this?
(what's with the new itunes, new foobar and new M-audio software?)
edit: asio has told me the problem is that the software is trying to resample the music at 32bits!---i'll get back to ye all when i figure out how to use M-Audio's new software

 

[granodemostasa]

did it, i set it to 16 bit and not oversampling.... the result is very good. conclusion: the new M-audio driver does not like over sampling-even if it thinks it can do it.
Edit: that reminded me that i wanted to ask what is the best output level for the audiophile (the RCA out). Thanks.

 

[Scrith]

I had to get the Audiophile USB out of the closet to try with this new driver (I threw it in there about a year ago after getting frustrated with the old drivers).

ASIO actually works!!! I had to shift the output channels by 2, but it works with both the .dll and .exe. ASIO output from Foobar2000.

And the output from Foobar2000 doesn't become corrupt if Windows makes a sound. Major breakthrough!

And it sounds good! I tested it very carefully against my E-Mu 1212M and finally found a couple of songs where I could differentiate between the two. I liked the Audiophile USB's s/pdif output better. So I called in my wife to see if she could hear a difference (she didn't know which card was which...she doesn't care about this stuff)...she preferred the Audiophile USB too (and explained the differences she heard...confirming what I heard on my own).

So I'm back to external USB audio for now.

I'm using a "gold" USB cable and "better" wall wart with it (vs. the stock items), by the way.

 

[Tim D]

Very pleasant suprise as I thought this product was end-of-life and would get no further updates. I ditched foobar until the new version gets settled and am happily using MediaMonkey with ASIO plugin and Shibatch mpg123 mp3 decoder. ASIO worked off the bat. Of course it worked before. However I can maintain 24bit/96khz mode in ASIO without complaint whereas before I'd have to purposely turn on another input/output to lower max sampling in order to get 24 bit output on 44.khz sound files. Sounds good so far with no nasties or hiccups. Release notes call it a complete re-write which is definitely nice as its 3 years since and that means 3 years more driver experience with the current Windows OS. Since its the first major release we can perhaps anticipate smaller minor revisions as they get user feedback. I can already tell these drivers seem a bit different as I can notice window event sounds along with ASIO now.

granodemostasa if you are using ASIO4ALL you should ditch it and just use the native ASIO support. Also the output bit-depth should not be 32, but 24 bit.


*edit* just ran ASIO caps on this version and unless I'm imagining things I think the ASIO capability got boosted in this version. It indicates 32-bit depth support (previous was 24 I am certain), and 4 input/outputs. In addition it supports 44.khz to 96khz. For some stupid reason the previous version in 24-bit mode would be 48khz to 96khz, or 44khz to 48khz depending on your max sampling.

Just bumped up my mpg123 output to 32bit which I'm pretty certain didn't work before and its works fine now.

 

[granodemostasa]

ho, that was a long time ago. since then i've gotten it to work fine. it's the driver from M-Audio's website. the only problem i'm having it is ever since i got the new window's update two days ago the control panel has been crashing every time i try to bring it up... for some reason this doesn't affect the output.

i'm still having an issue; windows asks me to install it every time i turn on the computer, even though it's already turned on...

 

[granodemostasa]

I've been doing some experiments with the audiophile usb's SPDIF output... and i'm wondering if you all have any opinions on these.

1. I set up my player...and i changed some settings on the audiophile usb control panel to output spdif at 24 bits (with max sample rate at 96K and actual sample rate at 44.1). The result was a very fast, forward sound with an unimaginably wide soundstage.

2. I set up the same player, and changed the settings to 16 bits (keeping the sample rate at 44.1). the result was a narrower soundstage, that went somewhat back to where it started... apparently this is how dacs are suppose to sound.... the soundstage was very deep.

3. I then went to Ableton's software, changed the driver from MME to ASIO. I then clicked out of ableton and went to my player. I kept the control panel at 24 bits. For some reason, this did not sound like experiment 1... it is deep, impactful, accurate and simply sounds the best.

What i don't get is what is the relationship between ableton, itunes, the ASIO driver and the M-Audio itself...

 

[Scrith]

I've only used the Audiophile USB with Foobar2000 and games. With my DAC1 I was using the 24-bit mode (and resampling using SRC in Foobar to 96K), which sounded better than 16/44, but I attributed this to partially bypassing the hardware ASRC resampling in the DAC1 (since, in my experience, the software Secret Rabbit resampler sounds the best, even better than dedicated hardware).

I switched back to 16-bit when I got the Lavry DA10 because I don't need to upsample to 96K for it (it sounds fine at the original 44K , since it isn't upsampling). I'll try comparing 16-bit to 24-bit tonight with the Lavry, but I doubt it is really going to sound any different (unless you put some additional data in the extra 8 bits, there is no difference at all between 16-bit and 24-bit data).

I am guessing that iTunes, or this Ableton software (which I've never heard of) is doing something (dithering perhaps?) that uses these extra 8 bits...maybe that is why you are hearing a difference?