Alternative to ASIO4ALL

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
bobland
Posts: 118
Joined: Wed Jul 21, 2010 2:32 pm

Alternative to ASIO4ALL

Post by bobland » Sat Sep 04, 2010 6:21 pm

I'm new to Live so I'd like to watch tutorials and use Live at the same time. Can't do this with ASIO4ALL because it's a one or nothing sort of thing. I'm using the on-board sound device so it looks like it's time to upgrade to something better.

Any suggestions for solving this problems?

Thanks,
Burt

leedsquietman
Posts: 6659
Joined: Sun Nov 19, 2006 1:56 am
Location: greater toronto area

Re: Alternative to ASIO4ALL

Post by leedsquietman » Sat Sep 04, 2010 8:07 pm

No, it is possible with asio4all to use multiple audio cards simultaneously but not with regular native asio drivers i.e. the ones which come with your audio card - because asio4all wraps to WDM which can handle aggregated devices, whereas the true asio protocol cannot !

http://www.djtechtools.com/forum/showthread.php?t=13317

this explains how you can do it (substitute LIVE for Traktor)

Just waiting for the first Mac guy to come along and say ... "this is dead easy on Mac with aggregated devices in core audio ... AND NO MESSING REQUIRED with voodoo generic drivers" :P
http://soundcloud.com/umbriel-rising http://www.myspace.com/leedsquietmandemos Live 7.0.18 SUITE, Cubase 5.5.2], Soundforge 9, Dell XPS M1530, 2.2 Ghz C2D, 4GB, Vista Ult SP2, legit plugins a plenty, Alesis IO14.

bobland
Posts: 118
Joined: Wed Jul 21, 2010 2:32 pm

Re: Alternative to ASIO4ALL

Post by bobland » Sat Sep 04, 2010 8:39 pm

I don't have any sound cards, just what comes off the mobo. From what I've read there doesn't appear to be any solution for a non-audio card PC that I know of.

dinaiz
Posts: 414
Joined: Thu Jul 24, 2008 2:50 pm
Location: France
Contact:

Re: Alternative to ASIO4ALL

Post by dinaiz » Sat Sep 04, 2010 9:06 pm

Well I don't think it matters indeed. I used ASIO4ALL with my laptop, without any external sound card and it worked, but maybe your millage varies ?

leedsquietman
Posts: 6659
Joined: Sun Nov 19, 2006 1:56 am
Location: greater toronto area

Re: Alternative to ASIO4ALL

Post by leedsquietman » Sat Sep 04, 2010 10:12 pm

asio4all works with internal cards and external audio cards/interfaces - look at the instructions again - I actually use asio4all with my Alesis IO14 audio interface, it works at lower latency and a higher choke threshold than the native Alesis driver.

I also have a Computer Music (shame :oops: ) magazine from 2007 (issue 117) which documents how to do it (set up 2 interfaces with asio4all to playback simultaneously( with a Soundmax internal card and an M-Audio interface to act as an aggregated device (i.e. you can run both soundcards through it) but seriously, I can't be arsed to go get it from the drawer under the sink in the crapper.

Try KVR forums. Or even Google.
http://soundcloud.com/umbriel-rising http://www.myspace.com/leedsquietmandemos Live 7.0.18 SUITE, Cubase 5.5.2], Soundforge 9, Dell XPS M1530, 2.2 Ghz C2D, 4GB, Vista Ult SP2, legit plugins a plenty, Alesis IO14.

Slightlydelic
Posts: 776
Joined: Tue May 26, 2009 1:42 pm

Re: Alternative to ASIO4ALL

Post by Slightlydelic » Sat Sep 04, 2010 10:26 pm

bobland wrote:I'm new to Live so I'd like to watch tutorials and use Live at the same time. Can't do this with ASIO4ALL because it's a one or nothing sort of thing. I'm using the on-board sound device so it looks like it's time to upgrade to something better.

Any suggestions for solving this problems?

Thanks,
Burt

are you saying if you run ableton you cant get sound playing through other apps? if so ive had that problem myself with my audio2dj, the problem is having the sample rate for the card set to 96khz in abletons preferences, if i drop to 44.1 it works.

check out your setting, you might be suffering from the same problem.

skunkworkz
Posts: 19
Joined: Wed May 05, 2010 1:06 pm

Re: Alternative to ASIO4ALL

Post by skunkworkz » Sun Sep 05, 2010 12:00 am

bobland wrote:I'm new to Live so I'd like to watch tutorials and use Live at the same time. Can't do this with ASIO4ALL because it's a one or nothing sort of thing. I'm using the on-board sound device so it looks like it's time to upgrade to something better.

Any suggestions for solving this problems?

Thanks,
Burt

Are you using Windows 7 or Vista?
When i upgraded :roll: to W7, this was the first thing I noticed I could do in XP but not 7.

bobland
Posts: 118
Joined: Wed Jul 21, 2010 2:32 pm

Re: Alternative to ASIO4ALL

Post by bobland » Sun Sep 05, 2010 12:53 am

I'm using 7 64bit. The sample rate is 44100. I tried changing the Channel Config settings but they wouldn't stick because I'm still on the trial. The full version will arrive on Thursday or Friday.

leedsquietman
Posts: 6659
Joined: Sun Nov 19, 2006 1:56 am
Location: greater toronto area

Re: Alternative to ASIO4ALL

Post by leedsquietman » Sun Sep 05, 2010 11:04 am

the sample rate has to be the same but if you ever lived in a World away from Live, this would be true anyway.

Use a sample rate converter to make everything the same !!!! It ain't rocket science boys ...
http://soundcloud.com/umbriel-rising http://www.myspace.com/leedsquietmandemos Live 7.0.18 SUITE, Cubase 5.5.2], Soundforge 9, Dell XPS M1530, 2.2 Ghz C2D, 4GB, Vista Ult SP2, legit plugins a plenty, Alesis IO14.

bobland
Posts: 118
Joined: Wed Jul 21, 2010 2:32 pm

Solved: Re: Alternative to ASIO4ALL

Post by bobland » Sun Sep 05, 2010 6:13 pm

I changed the ASIO driver to MME/DirectX and now I can hear Live and any other audio source. I can't detect any difference in sound quality between the two drivers. Now, I can watch tutorials and use Live at the same time.

Funny how these solutions are sometimes very obvious, right under your nose.

Thanks for the help,
Burt

dinaiz
Posts: 414
Joined: Thu Jul 24, 2008 2:50 pm
Location: France
Contact:

Re: Alternative to ASIO4ALL

Post by dinaiz » Sun Sep 05, 2010 6:22 pm

Yeah there's no difference in sound quality but MME/Direct X works at a much higher latency than ASIO. Setting your Live and Windows 7 preferences to have the same sample rate will allow you to use live with ASIO and watch the tutorials at the same time, hearing the sound. In windows 7, right click on the speaker incon on the system tray, then select "Reading devices", "Advanced statistics", and then select the same sample rate and bit depth as in live. Sorry my windows 7 is in french, so, maybe the labels don't match, but I'm sure you'll manage to figure it out :)

bobland
Posts: 118
Joined: Wed Jul 21, 2010 2:32 pm

Re: Alternative to ASIO4ALL

Post by bobland » Sun Sep 05, 2010 11:38 pm

dinaiz,
All of my sample rates are the same everywhere. The only thing I've been able to do is raise the sampling rate of the MME/DirectX driver to about 725 so I can watch tuts and get decent sound in Live. When I'm ready to work in live I switch back to the ASIO driver. At least I don't have to close/open any apps.

cutflow
Posts: 68
Joined: Tue Mar 23, 2010 7:53 pm

Re: Alternative to ASIO4ALL

Post by cutflow » Mon Sep 06, 2010 12:21 am

asio4all works great with my mobo onboard realtek audio card. i had a envy family card but removed it cuz it was horrible w/ live.. now the onboard card is 10x better

dinaiz
Posts: 414
Joined: Thu Jul 24, 2008 2:50 pm
Location: France
Contact:

Re: Alternative to ASIO4ALL

Post by dinaiz » Mon Sep 06, 2010 2:50 am

bobland wrote:dinaiz,
All of my sample rates are the same everywhere. The only thing I've been able to do is raise the sampling rate of the MME/DirectX driver to about 725 so I can watch tuts and get decent sound in Live. When I'm ready to work in live I switch back to the ASIO driver. At least I don't have to close/open any apps.
725 ? I don't know what you're talking about, but that's not sampling rate :-)

leedsquietman
Posts: 6659
Joined: Sun Nov 19, 2006 1:56 am
Location: greater toronto area

Re: Alternative to ASIO4ALL

Post by leedsquietman » Mon Sep 06, 2010 2:54 am

I think he means 725 SAMPLES latency. Which could be anywhere from about 35-55ms.

asio4all wraps mme/wdm drivers and turns them into a generic asio driver, in a similar way to Waves waveshell wrapper which allowed their plugins (once coded as DX plugins) to run under VST. Yet, it can still be preferable to native ASIO drivers, because some vendors write mediocre native asio drivers.
http://soundcloud.com/umbriel-rising http://www.myspace.com/leedsquietmandemos Live 7.0.18 SUITE, Cubase 5.5.2], Soundforge 9, Dell XPS M1530, 2.2 Ghz C2D, 4GB, Vista Ult SP2, legit plugins a plenty, Alesis IO14.

Post Reply