ASIO4ALL driving me crazy

[sparky99]

I have installed ASIO4ALL v2.15 to use with Ableton 11. I am using Windows 11 on an Intel i5-1135G7 with 4 cores and 16GB of RAM. Intel Smart Sound Technology.

No matter what I try, the crackling and popping sounds are very much present. I've modified sampling rates, increased / decreased the ASIO buffer size, added driver error compensation, latency compensation, hardware buffer select (this results in the worst crackling and popping ), amount of kernel buffers.

The CPU usage is only around 25% also.

When I use the default MME/DirectX driver instead, it is perfect, with no crackling or popping whatsoever.

I am not using any external interfaces, only instances of Diva, Serum and Omnisphere etc.

Of course ASIO4ALL is recommneded for better latency, but it seems that I can't use it.

Any suggestions here would greatly appreciate. Thanks.

[Tarekith]

If the manufacturer of your sound card provides drivers, download the latest version of those and try that. ASIO4ALL is not recommended for all set ups, these very few will benefit from that over the native drivers.

[A_K_F]

Hi,
I had exactly the same problem and could not get ASIO4ALL to run without cracks.
My solution was to install Voicemeeter (standard version was enough for me, but you can also use Banana or Potato) and use the included virtual ASIO output. Takes some time to understand, but runs perfectly and has a lot of nice features. Voicemeeter is donationware.

[contortrix]

ASIO4ALL is just a wrapper around the Windows audio APIs. You will need an audio interface with an official ASIO driver in order to get low latency. You can get a high quality interface like the MOTU M2 without spending a lot of money. If you have a Realtek chipset, you may be able to install the Realtek ASIO driver.

[102455]

Of course ASIO4ALL is recommneded for better latency

Says who? It's not an ASIO driver. It can't perform miracles. You don't need it.

If you don't have an ASIO interface, just use the default Windows driver. If you do have an ASIO interface, use the driver that came with it.

[A_K_F]

You don't need it.

In my case:
Default Windows driver (MME/DirectX): Output Latency 85 ms
Voicemeeter Virtual ASIO: Output Latency 21 ms
That's a huge difference.

[jlgrimes]

I have installed ASIO4ALL v2.15 to use with Ableton 11. I am using Windows 11 on an Intel i5-1135G7 with 4 cores and 16GB of RAM. Intel Smart Sound Technology.

No matter what I try, the crackling and popping sounds are very much present. I've modified sampling rates, increased / decreased the ASIO buffer size, added driver error compensation, latency compensation, hardware buffer select (this results in the worst crackling and popping ), amount of kernel buffers.

The CPU usage is only around 25% also.

When I use the default MME/DirectX driver instead, it is perfect, with no crackling or popping whatsoever.

I am not using any external interfaces, only instances of Diva, Serum and Omnisphere etc.

Of course ASIO4ALL is recommneded for better latency, but it seems that I can't use it.

Any suggestions here would greatly appreciate. Thanks.

I rarely had problems with ASIO4ALL.

it might be a Longshot but you could try seeing if your soundcard had an ASIO driver. I heard that some do (although I have never been lucky).

Also make sure your Windows 11 OS is optimized for music. Main thing is turning off Power saving plan (this usually makes a drastic difference in performance and might help)

There are other ASIO wrappers such as voicemeter and FLASIO4ALL and they support some extra features but IMO ASIO4ALL generally allows the lowest latency.

Other thing is to consider a cheap audio interface. They start around $30. Spend a little more money and something like a Scarlett is pretty nice in terms of latency performance.