ASIO4ALL vs native WDM drivers

n-Track Studio Discussion Forum
1

any advantage to ASIO4ALL

2

Hi everyone,

As I understand it, ASIO4ALL is a layer above WDM (i.e., uses the WDM drivers) and is used to provide an ASIO interface to programs that require ASIO.

Since N-Track works well with WDM, is there any benefit at all of installing ASIO4ALL and configuring N-track to use ASIO? I don’t have any issues with WDM – just wondering if ASIO4ALL has some other unknown benefit.

Thanks…gary

3

I use it on my laptop over my builtin soundcard to play Native Instruments B4 (standalone mode) for live work, so I don’t have to drag my MOTU 828 around (and disentangle it from the studio).

For whatever reason, NIB4 doesn’t support WDM. Using Asio4all I get very low latency. Seems to work better for low-latency stuff than WDM does, too, but I can’t account for that if what you say above is true (about it being built over WDM).

Anyway, it’s the only low-latency solution I could find for my laptop’s builtin. I thought I was going to have to buy an m-Audio Transit but I didn’ need it thanks to Asio4All.

4

Maybe I’ll run some comparison tests when I can find some time. Like I said, WDM is working fine for me, so no urgency. But I’m curious if there is some way to squeeze better performance out of ASIO4ALL versus WDM with kernel streaming. ASIO4ALL has a direct DMA mode that seems interesting.

Thanks…gary