WASAPI on a technological level does the exact same thing as ASIO, so there's absolutely no difference in sound quality. If you hear a difference, it's all in your head. That archimago article is talking about Directsound and the windows mixer, which WASAPI and ASIO bypasses. Note that this component is meant for systems where ASIO is the only available output method. It is highly recommended to use the default output modes instead of ASIO. Contrary to popular 'audiophile' claims, there are NO benefits from using ASIO as far as music playback quality is concerned, while bugs in ASIO drivers.Missing.

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Posted by5 years ago

So you just got your brand new DAC, ready to plug it in and enjoy Stereo Quality Music with your home-setup - and then all you hear is crooked music, background noises in the audio-stream, or even worse, absolutely nothing.

What to do?

(These are mostly software/driver/PC-hardware-side settings. I won't cover DAC-hardware-faults here. Also the Screenshots are in german, don't have access to an english copy of Windows at the moment.)

General Settings that are recommended for USB-DAC's anyway:

• Make sure your Windows-Sound-Ouput is at a decently hight level (75% and above) and regulate the final Volume using your Amp to avoid any range discrepancies

• Disable 'selective USB-Suspend' in your Energy-Options (Power Options->USB Settings->USB selective suspend setting for Windows, there is a Mac-Equivalent for it aswell, don't know the exact name of it though)

• Make sure your USB-Drivers are up-to-date (Device-Manager -> USB-Controller -> Rightclick on any controller -> Properties -> Driver -> Update Driver)

• Assure that the DAC has its own USB-Port and does not share it with any other device, as most DAC's use 46%+ of Bandwith, sharing with any other device can lead to problems. To check this go to Device-Manager -> View -> Device by Connection, then Open up the PC until you see an entry called 'PCI-Bus', which should have entries with names along the lines of 'universal PCI-to-USB Host controller' as children, open these up as deep as possible until you find your DAC and assure its the only child device of the Controller, if not, change the USB-Port the DAC is connected to (like this)

• If you don't plan on using it in any way, disable the On-Board-Sound-Card in your BIOS

• No matter what setup you have, always try to keep USB-Cables as short as possible, since the USB-Protocoll will drop packages on CRC-Errors (leading to skipping audio), which gets more likely the longer the cable is (USB supports up to 5m cables, but you should keep it under 2m)

• For desktops, it's better to connect the DAC to USB ports in the back directly on the motherboard. Avoid front panel USB on the case if possible as depending on your case these ports could be very low quality.

• In your Audio-Settings (Control-Panel -> Audio) make sure the device 'Stereomix' is disabled/not there at all

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If there is absolutely no Sound-Output:

• Check that the drivers have been installed Properly. This is indicated by the DAC beeing displayed properly in the Device-Manager, without any notification Icon above the Audio Icon.

• Check that your DAC is selected as default audio-source (Control-Panel -> Sound)

• Try different USB-Ports

• If running ASIO: Make sure ASIO has your DAC as output device (DAC Runnig, DAC not runnig), if it does not look like image 2, change it (by clicking on the device) and then restart the stream (simply stop + play for most players will do the trick)

• If possible, check if everything is running fine on another PC, if not, try replacing the cable, if that does not work, it might be a hardware-fault

The Audio-Output has crack-like noises in it/is unstable/skips sometimes:

• Install an ASIO-Driver (e.g. ASIO4all And use a Media-Player with ASIO-Support (e.g. foobar2000 with the foo_out_asio component) and set it to use the ASIO4all driver (for f2k: go to Preferences->Output->Device, select ASIO: ASIO4Allv2). After you have successfully done this, a little green Play-Icon will appear in the notification area of your task-bar. If you click on it, a configuration window will pop up.

• If its running with ASIO, but the noise is still there: Try to increase the sample size (Does not matter which ASIO driver, they all have a sample-slider somewhere). More samples will mean a longer delay from your player issuing the playback to actual sound, but unless you plan on playing e.g. an instrument the delay does not really matter (2048 samples @ 44.1 kHz = about 22 ms delay). Also make sure that the blue indicator on the sample bar is synched with the slider (it indicates the currently used sample rate, see the ASIO-Screenshots above: DAC Running has synched samplerates, DAC not running doesn't), if not, restart the audio-stream (Stop + Play)

• If there is only a single crack every few seconds, try to enable the 'always resample 44.1kHz <-> 48kHz option', as that kind of noise most likely comes from faulty resampling algorithms, ASIO4all can handle resampling just fine, if that does not solve it, check for other steps in your chain where source material gets resampled and disable them (players like foobar are best here, since they always restart the audio-stream for every song using the songs original sample rate => no resampling)

• If its not running fine even with those settings and ASIO4all, look for an ASIO-Driver by the manufacturer of your DAC and retry it, the settings should be very similar

• You may also try to use the WASAPI for Audio-Output, which is an alternative to ASIO. You can use it by adding WASAPI.fp2k-component to foobar and then selecting WASAPI (event): <Your DAC Name> as output

• Check the capability of your PC for real-time-streaming using e.g. this Latency-Checker.

  • If its mostly in the green, PC-Performance is not the issue.

  • If it isn't: check for any running program that takes up performance. The usual suspect in this case is Anti-Virus software. If it works fine with the AV disabled, search for a different AV to use.

  • If theres no program taking up performance: The Hardware of your PC is not capable of delivering a real-time-stream as needed for DAC's. With any PC not older then about 7-8 years, this should never happen.

• If the noise has a distinguishable pattern, it most likely is caused by interference. In that case, look for any source of radiation that might interfere. Most common are Mobile-Phones, WLAN-Devices, Power-Bricks, Lamps, the PC itself (If the DAC is placed on the PC itself. Which you shouldn't do. Really not.)

• Assure no other program is taxing your Hard-Drive heavily (e.g. 3800 useful chinese sentences pdf merge. a fast download, file transfers, synching applications like dropbox, Loading in games, etc.), as this can cause issues when playing FLAC files on old (slower) HDD's (to check this, use the windows ressource-monitor, and check the HDD-Tab. Start it by typing 'ress' in the taskbar-menue-search and pressing enter)

• Replace the USB-Cable your DAC uses and try connecting it to a powered USB-Hub (but again, make sure its the only device connected to that Hub)

• If you have tried every USB-Port and the issue prevails, try getting a PCIe-USB-Card (even the USB 3.0 ones only cost about 15$), but keep in mind that DAC's can have issues with USB 3.0, so if possible, try getting a 2.0 card.

• Some DACs with well implemented USB input will have its own dedicated power (+5V) and ground. This means you don't need the hot and cold pins on the cable from your computer. Normally this shouldn't affect anything but if you experience noise issues like a ground loop, you can try to tape up the power and ground pins (check Wikipedia for pin diagrams) on the USB plug so your DAC only gets the data pins. Of course you need to check if your DAC indeed has dedicated USB power for this to work.

• If you experience ground noise issues and your DAC has an optical input, try connecting to it with the optical solution, which are isolated against that kind of noise.

• Power your PC from different power-outlets, as especially in old buildings with old fuses the power can have little instabilities, which (in rare cases) will only articulate in this kind of setting. Especially if you power your PC from one fuse, and your speakers from another, a little phase-offset beetween the two can occur leading to audio-artifacts.

If im missing anything, you found another problem with a different solution, or something is wrong on here please post it in the comments below, so i can change it.

If you have never used the ASIO sound drivers in Windows, then you have not experienced high quality sound output experience yet. ASIO stands for Audio Stream Input/Output and is a standard developed by the German company Steinberg Media Technologies. The benefit of using ASIO is that it can access the hardware directly and thus avoids any issues usually encountered when using the regular sound card drivers. But one of the problems with using ASIO is that you can this interface only through an ASIO supporting application and not many such applications exist.

There is one music player application for Windows called Foobar2000 that does support ASIO and here is how you can configure Foobar2000 to use ASIO drivers:

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1. First of all install ASIO4ALL sound drivers in your Windows PC. These drivers do not replace your regular sound drivers, but are used only by ASIO enabled applications.
2. Download the latest version of Foobar2000 and install it in your Windows PC.
3. Download the ASIO Support component for Foobar and save it somewhere in your computer.
4. Launch Foobar2000, click on File in the menubar and select Preferences from there. You can also use the hotkey Ctrl+P .
5. In the preferences window, select Components and then click on the Install button. Choose the foo_out_asio.fb2k-component file that you downloaded in the step 3 above. It will install the ASIO support component and restart Foobar2000.
6. Once again open the preferences like in the step 4 above. In the preferences, select Playback → Output and then choose ASIO4ALL as the output device. Click on the OK button.
7. Restart Foobar2000 and you are ready to play the music through the ASIO interface. Make sure you use good quality headphones like the ones from Beats by Dre or Grado in order to experience the improvement in quality of the sound output.

When you play the music through ASIO4ALL sound drivers, you will see a small icon in the system tray of Windows desktop. You can click on this icon to configure the various settings for ASIO4ALL.

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