Asio Drivers Vista
I’ve only recently realised that a lot of my ASIO drivers don’t appear to bypass the Windows volume mixer and therefore don’t appear to be true ASIO drivers at all. I’m puzzled by this and can’t seem to find an answer to the question by Googling it. Are a lot of ASIO drivers out there actually fakes – just plain old WDM drivers clad in an ASIO wrapper to make them look as if they’re functioning in ASIO mode, like ASIO4ALL?Here’s what I’m talking about. Let’s say you’re listening to music from your PC through an external USB soundcard. You’ve downloaded the ASIO driver for this soundcard and carefully selected the ASIO driver as the ASIO playback device in your media player or DAW (in my case, JRiver or Adobe Audition). You start ASIO playback and then, out of curiosity, you click on the volume icon in the bottom right-hand corner of your Windows PC screen. This opens the Windows volume mixer.
By definition, your ASIO playback device shouldn’t be visible there because the whole point of ASIO is that it bypasses the Windows audio stack. But there it is – and what’s more, by altering the volume slider, you can change the playback volume!Now, that can’t be right.I’ve tested the ASIO devices that I have readily to hand on my Windows 10 PC and so far, I’ve found three “fakes” and two true ASIO drivers, as follows:1.
Foobar2000 No Asio Drivers Found Cubase
NAD M32 all-digital integrated amplifier with USB connection to PC. The ASIO driver goes through the Windows volume mixer and the volume can be changed from there.2. Lynx Hilo D/A and A/D Converter. The ASIO driver NEVER appears in the Windows volume mixer at any time.3.
Yulong U200 headphone DAC/amp. The ASIO driver is there in the Windows volume mixer and you can change the volume using the slider.4. IFi Nano DSD headphone DAC/amp. The ASIO driver never appears in the Windows volume mixer.5. NwAvGuy ODAC + O2 headphone DAC/amp. The ASIO driver (supplied by Savitech Corp.) is always there in the Windows volume mixer.Incidentally, in all cases where the ASIO driver goes through the volume mixer, the Wasapi driver does too, which is also incorrect.I’ve written to Steinberg asking if there are a lot of fake ASIO drivers out there but in the meantime, I wondered if anyone here could explain it?
Also, I’d be interested to hear if other people can see their ASIO drivers in the Windows volume mixer and change the playback volume using the mixer controls. Click to expand.Well, it may get more complicated than that.
The volume control may only be disabled if a device has a hardware volume control that makes itself known to the system on boot-up, and the driver is operating in exclusive mode, so it depends some on implementation of the driver. I don't think that makes them 'fake', just different. Could be that the ones disabling the volume are the 'fakes'On my Win 10 system with wasapi exclusive it does get disabled when using an external USB device even though that device has no volume control. I use the foobar master volume control. Of course, it does get enabled when playing back locally on the computer, even though still wasapi exclusive mode.
Foobar Asio Plugin
Well, it may get more complicated than that. The volume control may only be disabled if a device has a hardware volume control that makes itself known to the system on boot-up, and the driver is operating in exclusive mode, so it depends some on implementation of the driver.
I don't think that makes them 'fake', just different. Could be that the ones disabling the volume are the 'fakes'On my Win 10 system with wasapi exclusive it does get disabled when using an external USB device even though that device has no volume control. I use the foobar master volume control. Of course, it does get enabled when playing back locally on the computer, even though still wasapi exclusive mode. Click to expand.That's a very interesting thought.
I can see the sense in that - and yet, if for whatever reason the volume control in the Windows is enabled, surely that means that in effect that you're not getting true ASIO? Because the audio is being diverted through the Windows audio stack instead of being sent directly from the driver to the device.I agree the word 'fake' is not really satisfactory but I do think something strange is going on with ASIO drivers quite a lot of the time and there doesn't seem to be much information available on what's happening. I think I understand what's happening now.
The answer is in what Davey and C. Cushman have said above.I did another test and discovered that, although the 'fake' ASIO drivers appear in the Windows volume mixer, they do not in fact appear in the Sound control panel. Yes, you can see your audio device in the Sound control panel but it's not the ASIO driver you're looking at - it's the WDM driver, which isn't actually functioning while you're using the ASIO driver. I'm reopening this thread, as promised, to report the answer I received from Steinberg.
They said:'The fact that an ASIO compatible interface is available in Windows simply means that it comes with an additional driver that makes it available for common programs and Windows itself. Otherwise, an ASIO interface could not be used for listening to YouTube, Spotify, iTunes and so on.'
They also added this link, which is just basic background stuff on the difference between ASIO and WDM:Steinberg's answer fits with what we'd figured out so I think it's case closed. It was kind of them to reply. I've used 2 different Thesycon ASIO (one for a USB-S/PDIF converter and another for a USB DAC) and neither provided exclusivity. I could play a song on Foobar2000 and at the same time go to Youtube or VLC media player and all the sounds will be playing at the same time.
My solution on the DAC was to output S/PDIF from the computer sound card to the DAC and make it default in Windows playback devices and run the computer USB to the DAC and use the DAC's input selector to either play Foobar (using USB (ASIO)) or everything else (Coax (S/PDIF)). Switching back and forth is a bit of a hassle and not all DACs have input switching but at least the main audio doesn't get corrupted when playing a Youtube video or something.Or.use WASAPI exclusive mode.