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More => Old Versions => Media Center 11 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: escaflo on July 06, 2003, 02:17:43 am

Title: Diff. between ASIO and Waveout and Directsound
Post by: escaflo on July 06, 2003, 02:17:43 am

As the title suggest.

Anybody can tell me the difference (if there's any) between waveout and ASIO and Directsound?

I know that ASIO is mainly for input (low latency and such) but how is it for output? Is there a difference in output quality compare to the rest?

What are you using for your output among these 3?

Thanks :)

Title: Re: Diff. between ASIO and Waveout and Directsound
Post by: loraan on July 06, 2003, 08:29:08 am

I use DirectSound because, for some reason, when I use Wave Out, all my music plays about 1/2 dB louder than it should. The result is that any track that goes to 100% ends up clipping. When I play through DirectSound, this doesn't happen. I've tried like crazy to figure out where this extra gain is coming from, but I can't track it down (it's not Replay Gain, though!).

I don't use ASIO because my computer's sound card doesn't have ASIO drivers, so it's not an issue.

Title: Re: Diff. between ASIO and Waveout and Directsound
Post by: Eiffel on July 06, 2003, 09:00:03 am

There is a bug in Windows which results in less than perfect output with Directsound and Waveout, assuming you're using WDM sound card drivers (If you're still on Win98 or ME, the Vfd drivers work fine).

The ASIO drivers are not impacted by this bug, which is why it is often better to use them (assuming they are not themselves buggy, etc).

On my M-Audio 410, there is a noticeable improvement when I select the ASIO drivers... of course YMMV

Title: Re: Diff. between ASIO and Waveout and Directsound
Post by: phelt on July 06, 2003, 01:36:16 pm

When I use MC's ASIO output, some tracks play back with artifacts that I can only describe as 'digital clipping'. At first I thought some of my tracks were flawed since the artifacts were repeatable - always the same times in the same songs. But when I switched to DirectSound or Waveout the artifacts were not present.

I'm not going to lay this at MC's doorstep, however. I have not done enough testing with other apps and ASIO. It might be a driver problem, or a problem with my soundcard (Terratec Aureon Space). Just pitching in my experience.

Title: Re: Diff. between ASIO and Waveout and Directsound
Post by: nameless on July 06, 2003, 08:29:50 pm

I found this interesting and informative:

Explanation of DirectSound and WaveOut
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?act=Print&client=printer&f=27&t=6716&