I was just reading a Craig Anderton review of the Mackie Onyx 400 and he said ASIO performs much better than WDM, which may be orphaned as of the next release of Windows (Vista).

My question is - using the Presonus Inspire 1394, should I be concerned about using ASIO vs WDM with Sonar 4 Home Studio XL, and if so how do I switch from WDM to ASIO if I need to?

Is the implementation and/or choice of ASIO vs WDM a function of the DAW program or the audio interface?

I appreciate your patience and assistance as I get up to speed on the ins and outs of computer-based recording, my coming from a hardware MIDI sequencing and sampling background.

Thank you!

ASIO is usually the best option. Although it might have changed - WDM is stereo only, not more than 2 inputs. I use ASIO on the FirePod with no problems and 6 ms latency.

Thats funny. I use WDM with my card and I have 4 inputs. WDM is not stereo only.
Cakewalk was designed to use WDM drivers. ASIO support was added later. Which is best really depends on the quality of the drivers that your soundcard has. Some companies make better ASIO drivers than WDM. I'd say that you should try both and use whichever works best for your system.
WDM is really better because it can be shared between multiple apps. at the same time. A feature ASIO is still lacking.

Bill

WDM is really better because it can be shared between multiple apps. at the same time. A feature ASIO is still lacking.

Yes, but for most pro audio cards, the latency under ASIO is much less. I agree, use whichever one works better with your equipment.

Bill,

I'll have to see if WDM works with more than stereo with my FirePod. It didn't, but who knows. There is supposed to be a driver update, but if it ain't broke, don't upgrade it unless you have the time (a hard lesson I've learned).

Of course, most people say use ASIO, but I ran my M-Audio Transit with WDM since it worked with SF without having to reboot or anything after finishing up a Cake project. I didn't notice more latency, etc. So, what ever works.

Thanks for your replies, guys. Stupid follow up: How do you switch from WDM to ASIO - do you do it in Sonar 4 Home Studio, or from your audio interface?

Option-Audio-Advanced-Driver Mode

Cool. Thanks for the tip. I would have never figured out where to find that dialog box or tab without your help. I switched and now my driver dialog is reading "Inspire 1394 ASIO driver". Cool. Thanks, Dave.

I have Sonar 6 with a AsRock Mobo 970 Extreme 3- Akai EiE Pro - 8 Gigs of memory - Amd 8320e, with Seagate and Hitachi Drvies.  I used both Asio and Wdm drivers - the Wdm drivers seem to use less Cpu power than the Asio drivers.
But right now I'm driving the Asio drivers to see its' limits.  The Wdm drivers is more tweakable in Sonar 6 Audio options - with a lower latency of 5.8 ms.

This thread is 10 years old, bro....