Devices > Sound Cards, DAC's, Receivers, Speakers, and Headphones
Asus Essence ST Asio fix and questions
nwboater:
Hi Michael,
Thanks for the very thorough response!
Looks like you and I are doing similar things with our Essence STs. I am also running the Unified 1.31 and using Assio all the time. To me it does sound the best. I haven't been doing much video with MC lately, but once Red October (love that title!) gets a little better I may just try some Blue Rays. I haven't yet because I just don't feel like all the struggle.
Rod
mojave:
This was added in 16.0.107:
6. Changed: Improved lip-sync when using ASIO, especially with large hardware buffer sizes.
So far, the lip-sync has seemed better with ASIO.
Gislon:
Hooray. I think you've just sorted out something I've been struggling with. I have the rather good Xonar Essence STX card and I upgraded to Win7 (32bit) a few days a go. Thought I'd give MC16 a try (had been using foobar/ASIO).
With WASAPI (event) mode, the sound is at least as good as foobar/ASIO. The treble seems a little smoother, and the bass more plentiful.
BUT the auto sample rate switch on the XONAR has stopped working - that's with latest 1793 driver. If I've read the post above correctly, that's becuase the auto sample rate switch only works with ASIO - is that right?
I tried using MC in ASIO mode, but it seems to disable all volume controls and since I have no pre-amp, that's not practical. Am I missing a volume control, or is that also what's supposed to happen?
Seems a shame to have to go back to foobar, but if there's no fix for either of these, I think that's what I'll do.
JimH:
--- Quote from: Gislon on June 13, 2011, 10:01:42 am ---I tried using MC in ASIO mode, but it seems to disable all volume controls and since I have no pre-amp, that's not practical. Am I missing a volume control, or is that also what's supposed to happen?
--- End quote ---
Click on the speaker icon in the upper left corner of MC to change among several options.
mojave:
Gislon, I haven't been to head-fi.org for months, but just happend to see your post there and responded. I'll put the same thing here:
The Essence only bit-matches with ASIO, not with WASAPI. Also, it isn't MC16 that is bypassing the volume controls, it is the Essence driver that bypasses the volume control. This is a result of the bit-matched driver with Windows 7. This is noted in the driver'S notes at the Asus website:
--- Quote ---5. To keep the ASIO stream bit-perfect, the following two rules apply:
(1) The ASIO stream has higher priority of using DMA buffer than other streams. That is, when the ASIO stream is played, other streams cannot be played.
(2) No volume control is available for the ASIO stream.
--- End quote ---
I keep my bit rate in the Essence drivers at 44.1 since I listen to music most of the time. It then only makes a noise and switches when watching movies or higher resolution audio files.
JRiver Media Center can control the volume itself with its 64-bit audio path. Go to Player > Volume and switch to internal volume. You can also use the speaker icon to the left of the volume control on Standard View. There is also a new Volume Protectino feature located at the same place. The Volume Protection option (with 16.0.108 or newer) does three things:
1) Makes it so that it isn't possible to increase the volume by more than 5% at a time (so accidentally clicking 100% on the slider will not go to 100%)
2) Makes it so that the volume can not be increased by more than 20% a second
3) Makes it so that starting playback if nothing has played for 30 minutes sets the volume to 10% (unless the volume is already lower)
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