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Author Topic: WDM driver issues - volume and latency  (Read 2152 times)

madbrain

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WDM driver issues - volume and latency
« on: August 04, 2021, 02:31:52 am »

I didn't use the WDM driver much before because it seemed to add an inordinate amount of latency - on the order of half a second. It was extremely visible in things like Youtube where you would press the spacebar to pause the video, and the audio wouldn't stop for another half second.

Recently, I switched my soundcard hardware settings from 96 kHz to 48 kHz, and set the DSP to always output 48k, and everything is fine - no latency. Wish I had found this years ago.
It still doesn't make sense to me, because when playing within MC itself, the soundcard is fine at 96 kHz with no latency . Things like the pause button and skip track are instant, no delay.
Only the combination of 96 kHz and WDM causes the crazy delay. I don't know if anyone else has ever seen this issue, but I thought I would mention it.
The soundcard is an ECHO Audiofire 12. Problem is the same whether I set MC to output through ASIO or WASAPI. If I set 96 kHz, and enable the WDM drivers, Windows apps have a 0.5 second delay added.
If everything is at 48 kHz, no issue. Note that I'm using MC 32-bit here as there is a problem between MC 64 bit and the 64-bit ASIO driver for my soundcard.

So, now that I have worked around the latency issue, I plan on using the WDM driver more. The thing that perplexes me is the volume control now. I'm not sure what type of volume control to set in MC.
I have tried them all - internal, application, system, disabled.
In all of those cases, the behavior of the Windows Volume Mixer for the JRiver Media Center device is always the same : one can use it to completely mute the sound, but not to control the volume in between. It's either full on or full off. This is somewhat inconvenient, especially for Windows apps that don't have their own software volume control like some games.

Would it be possible for some sort of volume control to be implemented for the WDM driver ?
I understand there is a computation penalty to do it, but it's one I'm willing to pay for the convenience of being able to use the Windows volume mixer.

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