Great Article on the Blog For Windows Users

[DJ1855]

Hey Smitten,
Have you started to work on your dual boot entry? If you have some notes/outline/etc and would like some assistance in see if there are any gaps, additionally needed notes, etc, feel free to email me Victor at victor from party time dot com. I'm not a computer geek, but aren't computer illiterate either. I can go through the process to make sure the info makes sense to the general public.

[ssjaken]

hey smitten i came to re download the files but your dropbox is 404 ing

[smiTTTen]

It's fixed. The direct link to the script is: http://db.tt/4HOxDGp

[zimfella]

just want to say thanks for this script, manged to get my latency down from 16ms to 3.6ms with the help of the script(slightly edited to suit my machine) and other tips n tricks from you and this forum..... awesome work,thanks!

[JSM]

just want to say thanks for this script, manged to get my latency down from 16ms to 3.6ms with the help of the script(slightly edited to suit my machine) and other tips n tricks from you and this forum..... awesome work,thanks!

can i ask you what settings you have your card on, 'cos I can't believe that latency figure is even possible.

My S4 set at its lowest figures, 96K, 32 samples, 1ms USB, gives me a figure of 4.7ms,

my A8DJ is 96K, 64 (it won't go lower) 1ms USB gives 4.4ms, I'll check my A4DJ, when I find it, but I'm certain it's the same.


thanks

[zimfella]

use asio4all driver instead of NI 's audio dj drivers

[JSM]

asio4all is not an asio driver, it's a WDM driver pretending to be an ASIO.

[zimfella]

I'm no IT wizard but all the trouble I had with traktors drivers, came across a few threads here where people use that and works well for me. also evan though I acheived that, I don't find it neccesary to have latency that low and run it around 4.6ms

[JonathanBlake]

asio4all is not an asio driver, it's a WDM driver pretending to be an ASIO.

Please expound JSM.

[JSM]

Please expound JSM.

Take a look at their website, at wiki or speak to anyone who works in a professional studio ....

Definitions first

ASIO

Audio Stream Input/Output (ASIO) is a computer sound card driver protocol for digital audio specified by Steinberg, providing a low-latency and high fidelity interface between a software application and a computer's sound card.

WDM

Whereas Microsoft’s DirectSound is commonly used as an intermediary signal path for non-professional users, ASIO allows musicians and sound engineers to access external hardware directly.

to cut short your work,

the ASIO4ALL driver is what was once called a wrapper. one thing hidden inside the other and presented as something else.

99% of devices do not have low latency drivers made for them, mainly as they are not needed and Steinberg would need some kind of payment as it's their system.

to quote from the ASIO4ALL website.

ASIO4ALL uses WDM-Kernel streaming to achieve ....

Basically the real ASIO drivers bypass a ton of stuff at machine level to give low latencies..


ASIO4ALL still uses the WDM driver and all it's routing inside the machine and presents itself to the program (in this case Traktor) as an ASIO driver. Therefore it will never be as efficient as a real ASIO driver.


ASIO bypasses the normal audio path from a user application through layers of intermediary Windows operating system software so that an application connects directly to the sound card hardware. Each layer that is bypassed means a reduction in latency (the delay between an application sending audio information and it being reproduced by the sound card, or input signals from the sound card being available to the application). In this way ASIO offers a relatively simple way of accessing multiple audio inputs and outputs independently. Its main strength lies in its method of bypassing the inherently high latency and poor-quality mixing and sample rate conversion of Windows audio mixing kernels (KMixer), allowing direct, high speed communication with audio hardware.

Unlike KMixer, an unmixed ASIO output is "bit identical" or "bit perfect"; that is, the bits sent to or received from the audio interface are identical to those of the original source, thus having higher audio fidelity.

In addition, ASIO supports true 24-bit samples, unlike Windows MME and DirectSound which only pass the upper 16 bits. True 24-bit samples offer the potential for a higher signal-to-noise ratio.


Starting with Windows Vista, KMixer has been removed and replaced by WASAPI and a new WaveRT port driver but WaveRT cannot provide synchronized audio to multiple devices and does not support external clocks.


Now to simplify it a bit.

ASIO4ALL uses the windows driver, but it has another layer over the the top making it seem like a real ASIO driver to external programs.

there was another company a few years back http://www.asio2ks.de/index.shtml that was doing the same thing as ASIO4ALL ...


To sum up

If ASIO4ALL works for you, great. If you are running more than just one small soundcard, you'll run into problems. It's not the ASIO4ALL that will cause them, it's what ASIO4ALL has to use in order to work, that will cause the problems, that being the WDM driver.


Obviously this is just a windows problem, as both the MAC and LINUX (same thing really) have low latency built in (CoreAudio & ALSA)


if i have not explained clearly enough, sorry but it's early and one coffee isn't enough for a Monday morning.