Ableton Forum

I have a samsung with windows 7. I just bought ableton Live 8 this holiday. Im trying to set up the audio drivers and I am having problems. I have two audio drivers on my computer: MME/DirectX and Asio. When I plug in Asio, Asio will only support sound coming from Ableton live. Is this normal? Will I have to constantly change my Asio driver to my normal DirectX driver just to play audio from the internet or from other files on my computer?

It depends on the soundcard, not all of them will support what is called multi-client audio. Have you tried selecting the ASIO driver in Windows audio preferences?

If you are using ASIO4ALL then I believe that is how it works. A REAL audio interface (external USB or Firewire box) will usually let you use ASIO in Ableton Live and still have sound in everything else on your computer. My Echo soundcard, for example, lets me use ASIO in Live and just regular Windows7 audio drivers in everything else at the the same time with no problems.

Since you didn't mention any ASIO capable audio device in your post I'm assuming you ARE using ASIO4ALL which is just a fancy hack that works very well but it's not anything official.

There's a useful thread on Microsoft's site, "ASIO4ALL: can't run more than one audio application". Basically, you can't do that.

You can, however, toggle ASIO4ALL's attachment to your audio playback device. For example, launch Live, which also launches ASIO4ALL, or A4A. Mess around in Live. If you now want to, for example, listen to audio from a youtube video without exiting from Live, click the A4A icon in your task bar and click the blue icon next to your audio device--mine is "Realtek AC'97 Audio" (yeah, I know... lame). Now you can play back audio from your browser or any other non-A4A application. When you're done, click the now-black icon next to your device within the ASIO dialog box, which should turn it back to blue. There may be a second or two lag before A4A re-attaches to the device and Live can play through your device via A4A again.

@ Denktaku

So are you suggesting that I purchase a new soundcard? Like the Echo that you have inside your computer?
excuse me if I do not know what I sound like I'm talking about. learning about computers and this complex program at the same time is really difficult.

-McMeart

i usually turn live's sound engine to 'no audio' when i need to hear something else

def one of a4a's downfalls, the one-at-a-time thing

but then i was just recording some stuff and its latency is soo good for me, i cant get near that with lives builtin buffers etc....so..a tradeoff