WASAPI work around found!!!

[Solduios]

Rejoice as it seems I might have found a work around with WASAPI while multitasking!!!
 
I use VAC for playing music to my music channel on TS3 I run with a musicbot and then I had a clever idea.
 
 
Thing you need to have to get this to work http://software.muzychenko.net/eng/vac.htm (Virtual Audio Cable)
 
Music player that supports WASAPI.
 
So after setting up virtual Audio cable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do60YlsRK7c or 1000's of other you tube videos.
Make sure to set the virtual cable to do 8 - 24 bit sound at 48khz.
 

 
 
You can then set up your mp3 player make virtual audio cable 1 your default device ... now here is were we are gonna cheese a bit.
 
Go to sound - recording tab and find virtual line 1 right click on it and go to properties. Now click on listen tab and check box where it says listen to this device. Make sure under drop down menu to select your speakers. Now make sure both playback and record are set to 24bit 48khz studio quality.
 

 
Musicbee setup picture
 

 
 
Now all you have to do is test it! Working for me the audio guru can tell me if my fudge around trick is still bit perfect?

 

[mindbomb]

The workaround is to use directsound. The reason it isn't bitperfect is so that it can multitask. 

 

[Solduios]

  The workaround is to use directsound. The reason it isn't bitperfect is so that it can multitask. 

Not the point but this might be a solution ... dont poo poo on it until someone with audio gear can test it.

 

[jiiteepee]

Go to sound - recording tab and find virtual line 1 right click on it and go to properties. Now click on listen tab and check box where it says listen to this device. Make sure under drop down menu to select your speakers. Now make sure both playback and record are set to 24bit 48khz studio quality.

 
= everything is resampled to 24/48kHz?
 
Quote:

  Working for me the audio guru can tell me if my fudge around trick is still bit perfect?

 
Could be if one source and its format is 24/48kHz (and no DSP filters enabled ofcourse)?

 

[Solduios]

   
Could be if one source and its format is 24/48kHz (and no DSP filters enabled ofcourse)?

I dont use DSP and yes all of it is set at 24/48 khz

 

[jiiteepee]

  I dont use DSP and yes all of it is set at 24/48 khz

 
Set? You know mp3 files usually are 44.1kHz (48kHz is supported ofcourse).
If your audio file format isn't 24-bit/48kHz then your 'workaround' resamples it to 24-bit/48kHz and there looses the "bit-perfectness".

 

[A_Man_Eating_Duck]

Totally agree with mindbomb, save yourself the headache and just use directsound.

 

[Solduios]

Totally agree with mindbomb, save yourself the headache and just use directsound.

Its not to hard to setup if you already have VAC idk if I would run out and buy the program just for this setup though.

 

[A_Man_Eating_Duck]

It's far quicker to just choose directsound then having to fiddle around with this config for no real gain. There is always a chance of incompatibilities (glitching, BSODs) by adding another piece of software to your output chain.

I understand this software has it's uses, just this is not one of them.

 

[mindbomb]

It's not a question of easiness, what I was trying to say is that the reason shared renderers are not bitperfect is fundamentally related to the fact that they are shared, and since you were able to share, that suggests it's not bitperfect. 

 

[castleofargh]

 you do not get bit perfect and cannot get it in that configuration. you're mixing several channels into 1signal, so each sample of the 48000 samples per second have a value resulting from mixing all those sources. making it by definition not bit perfect in any way. all you can hope for is that the mixer does a good job.
 
sadly my advice is the same as other members, DS for everybody, at least it exists for that very purpose so you know the mixer will be ok.
 
not that any choice might actually change the sound in any audible way.
 
 
 I'm guessing you're doing some recordings, but sometimes you actually stream while playing. in both situations it's not like the video will keep a nice lossless 16/48 so you shouldn't bother so much about wasapi.
when streaming you could save a little bandwidth using 44khz for everything instead of 48 if whatever video codec you use allows it.

 

[Jam Boy]

From: http://www.head-fi.org/t/690832/asio-superior/60

 
WASAPI does take complete control of the playback device so nothing else can use it.  It can actually cause some apps to stop responding like Spotify and Flash Player if the audio device is taken away from them while playing.  The whole point of WASAPI is to bypass the windows audio stack and interface directly with the playback device, by that very definition the device is "unavailable" to windows or any other app to play back though it.

 




A quick caveat is that Wasapi running in non-exclusive mode will let you hear system sounds and other audio streams while playing music through your media player.



However, not allowing applications to take exclusive control of the audio negates all the benefits of Wasapi and is essentially like running Directsound.

 

 

[Solduios]

   you do not get bit perfect and cannot get it in that configuration. you're mixing several channels into 1signal, so each sample of the 48000 samples per second have a value resulting from mixing all those sources. making it by definition not bit perfect in any way. all you can hope for is that the mixer does a good job.
 
sadly my advice is the same as other members, DS for everybody, at least it exists for that very purpose so you know the mixer will be ok.
 
not that any choice might actually change the sound in any audible way.
 
 
 I'm guessing you're doing some recordings, but sometimes you actually stream while playing. in both situations it's not like the video will keep a nice lossless 16/48 so you shouldn't bother so much about wasapi.
when streaming you could save a little bandwidth using 44khz for everything instead of 48 if whatever video codec you use allows it.

I was kinda of afraid of that ... I dont have any way of testing the quality and I do notice a bit of a difference between DS and wasapi for sound quality on my system.... but drives me nuts trying to game w/o sound just to get better music quality. The one bad thing I noticed with my setup is after a full use of playing games and running VAC like that it tends to bog down the system might be a memory issue with the software. If I had the audio gear I would like to test it but at last I just started to get into more the audiophile stuff and dont really have the money atm to play around with it.
 
I suppose the ultimate work around would for me to build a tiny dedicated mini media computer with high end audio components. Maybe ill do that later as I can probably make something really nice for around 300-400$ or less.
 
The way I setup my TS3 music room was dedicated to music using the Opus Music codec just for that channel and the sound quality is surprisingly pretty good but it also very much reliant on internet upload speed. So sometime when doing heavy multi-tasking involving internet it can warble a bit probably do to packet loss my connection usually good enough for that not to happen but my brother isnt so lucky when he run his musicbot.

 

[Solduios]

From: http://www.head-fi.org/t/690832/asio-superior/60
 

 

   
WASAPI does take complete control of the playback device so nothing else can use it.  It can actually cause some apps to stop responding like Spotify and Flash Player if the audio device is taken away from them while playing.  The whole point of WASAPI is to bypass the windows audio stack and interface directly with the playback device, by that very definition the device is "unavailable" to windows or any other app to play back though it.

 




A quick caveat is that Wasapi running in non-exclusive mode will let you hear system sounds and other audio streams while playing music through your media player.



However, not allowing applications to take exclusive control of the audio negates all the benefits of Wasapi and is essentially like running Directsound.

 

Hmmm I just figure what I was doing was basically monitoring the output I haven't heard any oddities as of yet and can notice the sound difference between DS and wasapi even while running it through VAC.