Originally Posted By: Matt Finley
What I was thinking is, the sticky isn't for the next person with the problem. It's for those of us who respond. I have no idea why this "ASIO Always On" setting would have the effect described, much less for which sound devices it occurs. If you know, would you please post that? Thanks.


It would take me a long time to inestigate and post all the different sound devices and their drivers, that's asking too much and the situation is a dynamic subject to change as new items are released, old ones are supported - or not - so let's just go with a generic explanation.

There are now two kinds of ASIO.

The original ASIO was basically a "one man dog" in the sense that once an audio program captured the driver, it would not and could not share with another open audio program. This was done intentionally, by design, because the whole concept of the original Steinberg ASIO sound drivers were to create a "sacrosanct" digital path from disk to sound device and vice verse. No interruptions from programs that call interrupts, or other background proggie stuff. Not only was ASIO designed for that lower latency that almost all home recordists will tout, it was also designed for that uninterrupted bit stream.

This is why we have to tell folks that are trying to work with two audio recording programs at the same time, with both open, to change BB, for example, to MME Windows Sound drivers while their DAW stays with the ASIO drivers.

But development is never a static situation, and today we can find ASIO2 sound drivers. ASIO2 can allow for two separate programs to both access the ASIO drivers simultaneously.

That said, ASIO2 still may or may not work in that fashion for everyone, likely due to OS choice, OS Setting variations and maybe some other things as well.

The "ASIO Always On" setting in the PGMusic program allows for you to tell the program whether or not to allow release of the ASIO driver for use by another program at the same time. But it doesn't always work with all programs and all machines and systems, or so it seems from the reports of those on this forum who have had issues from time to time.

If you have to make a Sticky about the issue, likely a good thing to do is just post that the user with problems should try that setting both ways to see which setting, True or False, allows them to record or otherwise may solve the issue at hand.

One of the big problems concerning use or not of ASIO drivers is the common perception that ASIO is the "Pro" choice and that ASIO sound drivers can sound "better" or have higher fidelity than the Windows Sound Drivers.

That is not true at all.

Both kinds of sound drivers create the same PCM Digital Audio (.wav if its a PC) file.

Then there are all those who try to tell us that they are so keen in hearing that they can actually hear the difference when recording if the latency is down below the 25mS mark.

Ignore them, it can and has been proven empirically numerous times that the human hearing that consists of ears, central nervous system and brain response just does not have the type of resolution needed to make that claim.

Neither does the speed of playing music.


--Mac

--Mac

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