Just in case this is helpful...Jimmy Landry from Cakewalk was running the TASCAM US-366 interface with Sonar and getting audio weirdness, not so much like standard audio dropouts from too low latency but almost like a lo-fi signal processor. I remembered that "sound" from when I'd used ASIO4ALL and had problems with it on a Vista laptop. Jimmy was using the TASCAM drivers but as soon as he uninstalled the ASIO4ALL drivers, the problem went away. I don't know the reason why, but...I report, you decide.
 
If you're encountering audio problems while using interface-specific drivers but also have ASIO4ALL installed, try uninstalling it and see what happens.
 
 

There have been issues with ASIO4all. I have had problems of tracks being recorded out of sync using this driver while using certain audio interfaces. Other audio interfaces I used had no issues with this driver. This is why people either love ASIO4all or Hate it.
 
The ASIO4all concept has made it's way to a new driver called ASIOKS. It has less issues, but the same thing applies. People either love it or hate it. Of course this is all based on personal experience and a wide variation of hardware.
 
ASIOKS-http://www.asio2ks.de/
 
I have not used ASIO4all in years. I think ASIOks is better, but I don't use it either. With the advancement of newer hardware and faster computers using driver protocols like this are not really necessary for me anymore.

You are aware that its a wrapper that uses MME or WDM drivers as its connection to the audio device? 
 
I can see someone using it to run Cubase because it doesn't support WDM and if you audio device only has WDM drivers you have very little choice. For Sonar its silly.

It's not silly if you are on the road with no interface.  not sure why but it seems to work a little better than stock drivers on most laptops.

But it is working with stock drivers. It has to. 

The below is from the web site. 
 
What started as a bedroom project in early 2003 - for the sole purpose to get ASIO support for the AC97 on my laptop - has become ASIO4ALL - the universal ASIO driver for WDM audio.

Honestly, I did not expect this project to become as popular as it has become (but this popularity does not particularly dissapoint me either ;-)

ASIO4ALL is a hardware independent low latency ASIO driver for WDM audio devices. It uses WDM Kernel-Streaming and sometimes even more sophisticated methods to achieve its objectives.

In order to successfully run ASIO4ALL, you need:


A WDM-compatible operating system, such as Win98SE/ME/2k/XP/2003/XP64 or Windows Vista x86/x64.


A WDM-driver for your audio hardware. (Under Win2k/XP/Vista... this is implicit, not so under Win98SE/WinME.)


A couple minutes of your time and a little bit of luck.

I have no idea why many computers run better with the wrapper than without it , but it simply does for me and thousands of others.  Sonar is unusable without my interface if I select any of the other stock options, regardless of setting.  It's not like asio4all works that great, but for very light mixing jobs it does the trick. I'm sure someone could offer a technical reason why.  I simply don't know. It just does

asio4all works for me too,but only on the lappy realtek or photon or numark , it exists happily along side edirol ua1000 drivers :-)

I rarely use it since I got an interface small enough to fit in laptop bag now, but kept it installed.  I will remove to see if it affactes performance of interface drivers

John
You are aware that its a wrapper that uses MME or WDM drivers as its connection to the audio device? 
 
I can see someone using it to run Cubase because it doesn't support WDM and if you audio device only has WDM drivers you have very little choice. For Sonar its silly.

It has been a long time since I used these drivers. Like I said I don't need to use them anymore. I used them because of a limitation with the hardware not the software. Way back when I first started experimenting with recording on a computer platform I was using Sonar pro audio 9. The hardware I was using only had ASIO drivers. there were no WDM drivers for the hardware I had at the time.
 
Later When I upgraded to Sonar 3 they came out with WDM drivers but they did not work well at all, ASIO was still a superior driver. The limitation that really bugged me was that you could only have one hardware device at one time with ASIO. ASIO4all was a work around in that it allowed me to use other hardware at the same time and I did not need to worry about the bad WDM drivers the hardware vender threw out there. It was not without its bugs and issues, but I got to use two different hardware devices at once using this ASIO wrapper.
 
That is why people still use it today. I am sorry for the confusion I meant to call ASIO the protocol not ASIO4all. That is what I get for not proof reading my posts. With todays driver protocols and fast computers and advanced hardware I have no personal need for ASIO4all
 
Sorry for the confusion John