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USB ASIO Support for External DACs

Apr 19, 2009 at 9:53 AM Post #16 of 43
I've tried this driver...can't say I'm that impressed, really.

Its impossible to make any meaningful comments on sound because, at least in my experience, it becomes impossible to A/B - once the ASIO driver is installed, you can't use ASIO4ALL on the device anymore.

One thing that was striking, even after not listening during the install, was that the USB-ASIO drivers are brighter. Seems absurd I know, but that was my strong impression. May simply be placebo.

No other radical changes that I noticed. Being brighter, its a touch clearer of course. There may be a slight improvement, but as I say, its very difficult to say for sure. I personally can see several far better ways to spend 55 euro.
 
Apr 19, 2009 at 11:06 AM Post #17 of 43
Quote:

Originally Posted by Starky /img/forum/go_quote.gif
I've tried this driver...can't say I'm that impressed, really.

Its impossible to make any meaningful comments on sound because, at least in my experience, it becomes impossible to A/B - once the ASIO driver is installed, you can't use ASIO4ALL on the device anymore.

One thing that was striking, even after not listening during the install, was that the USB-ASIO drivers are brighter. Seems absurd I know, but that was my strong impression. May simply be placebo.

No other radical changes that I noticed. Being brighter, its a touch clearer of course. There may be a slight improvement, but as I say, its very difficult to say for sure. I personally can see several far better ways to spend 55 euro.


I agree, they seem brighter to me too but bass in now nonexistent! And how do I enable asio4all again, by uninstalling the usb driver? Too bad I can't compare both side by side since asio4all gets disabled by the usb driver.
 
Apr 19, 2009 at 11:27 AM Post #18 of 43
Quote:

Originally Posted by squall343 /img/forum/go_quote.gif
usb audio does not need drivers because win xp or vista have the drivers already
however what the OP stated is that the company sell drivers for USB ASIO which is much better than the free usb asio drivers out there currently


no, I disagree.

the problem is NOT (ever) the usb drivers.

the problem, such that it is, is the kmixer. its easy to bypass that, for free, and then you can use BOG STANDARD usb-audio drivers.

its NOT the driver, folks, its the kmixer and getting a 'paid for' driver is just being lazy. sorry to be blunt but some of you have more money than 'cents' (lol).
 
Apr 19, 2009 at 11:42 AM Post #19 of 43
Quote:

Originally Posted by linuxworks /img/forum/go_quote.gif
no, I disagree.

the problem is NOT (ever) the usb drivers.

the problem, such that it is, is the kmixer. its easy to bypass that, for free, and then you can use BOG STANDARD usb-audio drivers.

its NOT the driver, folks, its the kmixer and getting a 'paid for' driver is just being lazy. sorry to be blunt but some of you have more money than 'cents' (lol).


I agree, I'm using Asio4all to bypass kmixer, the XP usb driver works just fine
 
Apr 19, 2009 at 11:47 AM Post #20 of 43
Quote:

Originally Posted by linuxworks /img/forum/go_quote.gif
no, I disagree.

the problem is NOT (ever) the usb drivers.

the problem, such that it is, is the kmixer. its easy to bypass that, for free, and then you can use BOG STANDARD usb-audio drivers.

its NOT the driver, folks, its the kmixer and getting a 'paid for' driver is just being lazy. sorry to be blunt but some of you have more money than 'cents' (lol).


I just implied that the commercial usb audio asio driver is much better than the free asio4all driver which i have been using for more than 2 years

that why i get it
confused_face.gif


and fyi, there are some other dac such as apogee, esi, audiotrak, creative and m audio that bundle this commerical driver foc for their product
 
Apr 19, 2009 at 12:16 PM Post #21 of 43
Quote:

Originally Posted by squall343 /img/forum/go_quote.gif
I just implied that the commercial usb audio asio driver is much better than the free asio4all driver which i have been using for more than 2 years

that why i get it
confused_face.gif


and fyi, there are some other dac such as apogee, esi, audiotrak, creative and m audio that bundle this commerical driver foc for their product


I'm not aware of any Creative/EMU products bundling this driver
 
Apr 19, 2009 at 5:32 PM Post #23 of 43
Properly set asio4all is already bit-perfect and bypasses kmixer, how another bit-perfect driver (if it is actually) can sound differently, they both just send digital PCM bit-steam, unless there is difference in volume the result should be identical. The only benefit USB-ASIO drivers have over ASIO4ALL is lower latency, which is essential for mixing and recording but irrelevant for playback.
 
Apr 19, 2009 at 6:04 PM Post #24 of 43
Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew_WOT /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Properly set asio4all is already bit-perfect and bypasses kmixer, how another bit-perfect driver (if it is actually) can sound differently, they both just send digital PCM bit-steam, unless there is difference in volume the result should be identical. The only benefit USB-ASIO drivers have over ASIO4ALL is lower latency, which is essential for mixing and recording but irrelevant for playback.


I have no idea why, but with ASIO4All my DAC reports the input signal from the Trends UD10.1 as being 16bit, while with the USB-Audio driver it reports it as 20bit. Like I had said before, this does result in a noticeable difference in sound.
 
Apr 19, 2009 at 7:04 PM Post #27 of 43
Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew_WOT /img/forum/go_quote.gif
The only benefit USB-ASIO drivers have over ASIO4ALL is lower latency, which is essential for mixing and recording but irrelevant for playback.


+1 for you.

this latency means NOTHING to playback. why? how long does it take from hitting 'play' to hearing the music? is it measured in seconds or fractions? is that startup time really of importance when the 'target' is a human? no, not really.

there's no bit to bit latency, its handled by the clocking of the hardware, the software has no say in that. its not like there is going to be less jitter (sigh) in a low latency style driver. the bits get squirted out the same relative to each other - once the train starts.
 
Apr 29, 2009 at 3:56 PM Post #29 of 43
Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew_WOT /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Properly set asio4all is already bit-perfect and bypasses kmixer, how another bit-perfect driver (if it is actually) can sound differently, they both just send digital PCM bit-steam, unless there is difference in volume the result should be identical. The only benefit USB-ASIO drivers have over ASIO4ALL is lower latency, which is essential for mixing and recording but irrelevant for playback.


I have read all I ever want to on how to setup ASIO4All. Everything from using the old Foobar .8.3 version with Otachan, to the latest Fooobar using their plugin, different versions of ASIO4All, Winamp and so on.

None of that made even close the difference to using the USB ASIO drivers.

@ Linux, I'm not gonna argue with you, if that's your opinion, great. I'm just money change with no brain, thank you.

For others, just listen for yourself. Some like me do not need to A/B test as the difference is immediately noticable. We have been listening to our ASIO4All setup for months and years.

For me the difference of going to an actual ASIO driver instead of emulation to bypass the KMixer was bigger than going from my standard soundcard to external.

And frankly, it's NOT just bypassing KMixer. If that was the case, USB ASIO would sound the same as ASIO4All which is not the case. It's like using generic video card driver provided by Windows to using proper video drivers by the GPU manufacturer. It's that big of a difference for me.

Also for those confused about ASIO4All, IT IS NOT A DRIVER. Whoever has that website is very misleading with that title. It's an EMULATION for hardware that do not support true ASIO.
 
Apr 29, 2009 at 4:43 PM Post #30 of 43
This is gonna be much like the cable debate.

I can already guess how it'll go:

Person A: It made a night and day difference.
Person B: It's impossible, I don't even need to test it to tell you that.
Person A: You just need to try it yourself.
Person B: I'm willing to bet that you can't tell a difference in a DBT. It's pure snake oil.
Person A: Just because you can't tell a difference doesn't mean others can't

Debate goes on...

Sounds familiar anyone?
 
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