[Mr.Radar]

ASIO is a standard and many cards (especially "professional" cards) have it, though the stock Via drivers (which the AV-710 uses) doesn't have it. For cards that have working Kernel Streaming (like the AV-710) you can use the ASIO4All wrapper that allows ASIO through Kernel Streaming.

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Can you use ASIO with Winamp (it's my preferred music player) or do you have to play songs through a certain application in order to take advantage of ASIO?

There is an unofficial ASIO output plugin for Winamp (that also features a great, but CPU intensive, resampler).

 

[Kal525]

I think I'm even more confused now. So to use ASIO you need to have software that supports it, it's not a system wide driver that you can install so that all applications use it? How exactly would I get it to work with my emu card? Is it even worth it? As for the sampling rate you said you need ASIO for 96 and 192 khz playback, but cds are only recorded at 44 khz so is this playback only good for things you record yourself at these higher sampling rates? Sorry for all the questions, this is some confusing stuff.

 

[Mr.Radar]

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Originally Posted by Kal525 I think I'm even more confused now. So to use ASIO you need to have software that supports it, it's not a system wide driver that you can install so that all applications use it?

Sorry if my post was confusing. The EMU drivers have built-in ASIO support, but many consumer cards (like the AV-710) need special software (like ASIO4All) to use ASIO.

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How exactly would I get it to work with my emu card? Is it even worth it?

For your EMU card you can just need to have ASIO setup to output and then use the ASIO output feature/plugin/component of whatever application you're using for playing back. As for if it's worth it or not, some people think it is (it bypass kmixer, which distorts the audio signal slightly), and some don't (the difference is pretty hard to hear and ASIO uses more CPU power).

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As for the sampling rate you said you need ASIO for 96 and 192 khz playback, but cds are only recorded at 44 khz so is this playback only good for things you record yourself at these higher sampling rates?

I was trying to say that on EMU cards you need to use ASIO to use the 96KHz and 192KHz sampling rates. You can use any rate supported by the card (including 44.1 KHz) with ASIO, but you can only use 44.1KHz or 48KHz with WDM (DirectSound/WaveOut) on the EMU cards.

 

[Kal525]

Ok, thanks for the clarification. I don't think I am going to worry about ASIO, considering the only winamp plugin is documented in japanese. It sounds good enough for me now anyway.

My last remaining question is about the RCA cable I bought. Does anyone think 12 feet is too long or does length not matter?

 

[Mr.Radar]

As long as the cable is well sheilded you shouldn't have any issues with length.