ASIO vs WDM: What's the Latest Opinion?

Greetings:

Until the other day, I've always used WDM drivers with my Delta 1010. For whatever reason, after installing Sonar 6 I decided to try the ASIO drivers, but haven't noticed a major change.

So, is there a primer somewhere about the advantages and disadvantages of ASIO vs. WDM. One advantage for the latter, I noticed, is that the drivers apparently can be independently named, while ASIO drivers are automatically stereo pairs.

Thanks,

Depends on the card you're using. Delta=WDM, E-MU=ASIO. Not sure about others but it depends on the manufacturer's drivers mostly.

I use an 1820M and ASIO is the only choice. WDM results in dropouts and unsatisfactory latency.

I use a delta 1010 and 44 and I can use both with very stable results. I even sometime record while using vocals with WDM drivers at 1.5ms latency to get a quick response on plugins like revs/comp/synths. It does take more resoarces up but then i drop back to 8 or 10 ms for mixing/bouncing/freezing.

I use a Delta 1010lt with ASIO drivers and haven't had any problems whatsoever. Of course, I haven't yet taxed the software or my machine. I've got one file with 16 tracks of plain audio. So far, everything else I've done uses less resources.

WDM drivers for my Lynx card were flaky. ASIO was rock solid...

It totally depends on the card.

Deltas W/ WDM here

I'm using an RME HDSP9652. They added support for WDM to their cards in the beta driver. I've been using it for a while. I get some pops and clicks on occasion with the WDM drivers. The RME ASIO drivers are rock solid. I like using the WDM drivers because I can quickly change my master out to the Sound Blaster and give my mix a listen on my Klipsch computer speakers for a minute. When ASIO is enabled the Sound Blaster options are greyed out.

It seems like the ASIO drivers are the first choice for most users. If I had to pick one I would go with the ASIO as well.

As others said, depends on sound device as to what works best. I use WDM with my Dakota/Montana, ASIO with my MOTU 828, and just switched from WDM to ASIO with my Audiophile2496 due to Quicktime 7 and Sonar not working together with WDM.

I generally prefer WDM for Sonar, since you get the latency slider in the Audio Options. That way, I keep my soundcard buffer size at 64 and just use the slider to adjust latency.

I don't think that opinion has any thing to do with it. It's usually obvious for me which one is best. I don't have to think about it. In SONAR and P5V2 it's WDM all the way.

Use Whatever works.

I was having some strange audio pauses that would sort of just lock up. Tried the ASIO on my 1010 and things have been working good.

I owned 3 different Audiocards/interfaces yet (Terratec EWS 24/96 PCI-card, Tascam US-122 USB, now Phonic Helix 12 FW), ASIO was always the choice for lowest latency. But it depends on the sound device. Did somebody mention this yet?

My Echo Mia card does better with Asio than WDM

I have 2 Delta 66s and a Motu 24IO I strictly use ASIO with no issues.. I tried WMD a few times with each and ehhh the ASIO seems to work alot better. I've used the 24IO in a live situation all 24 tracks for about 4 hours straight with plugins going real time for a mix out to DVD as well... With 0 issues.. of course you have to do that at 44k 16bit other wise you hit the max wav file size limit with is like 2gb or soo.. But I've had no issues with ASIO...

ORIGINAL: Bugermass

I tried WMD a few times with each

Watch out. The FBI are on their way now.

Seriously, no contest here. WDM preferred because I feel I'm getting better performance, ie the perfpormance I want. Easy to adjust latency separately for mixing and recording, and of course multiple sound cards is no drama.

Best,
Geoff

Try both pick the one with the best latency also run checks looking for pop/clicks.

M-audio 24/96 here using ASIO. 5.8ms at all times and sometimes 2.9 without a hitch... Ever.

ORIGINAL: ReValveiT

M-audio 24/96 here using ASIO. 5.8ms at all times and sometimes 2.9 without a hitch... Ever.

Exactly my experience as well. ASIO on a 2496, 5.8ms always and sometimes 2.9 without a hitch... ever.

This reply is to the user that started this thread:

One of the major advantages of an ASIO driver used to be that one can do multitrack recording (having each instrument and vocal recorded to a separate track simultaneously), has this changed with Pro sound cards? And another major advantage was that one was able to get lower latency with an ASIO driver (but now some people report good latency with a WDM driver).

as yet not mentioned in this thread is that sometimes wdm and asio actually sound different. its to do with how the driver interacts with something called "kmixer" thats deep inside xp. and maby other reasons:)

on the emu cards at least, asio sounds far better than wdm.


m

ORIGINAL: mildew
as yet not mentioned in this thread is that sometimes wdm and asio actually sound different. its to do with how the driver interacts with something called "kmixer" thats deep inside xp. and maby other reasons:)

When Sonar uses WDM mode, it bypasses the kmixer. WDM and ASIO both pass the audio data unchanged and therefore should sound the same. If they sound different then the driver is defective.

WDM with M-Audio FW410 here. No real difference to ASIO in quality or latency, but WDM is so much more flexible, with being able to change latency instantly without having to restart Sonar. Saves a lot of time when you go between record and mix, editing mode, when you obviously have different requirements for latency.

I use wdm drivers, and since I have a MOTU 896, I also use ASIO4ALL. I get the benefits of Sonar and a PC using wdm drivers, and the motu sees the asio drivers. This seems to work very well for me.

ORIGINAL: tarsier
When Sonar uses WDM mode, it bypasses the kmixer. WDM and ASIO both pass the audio data unchanged and therefore should sound the same. If they sound different then the driver is defective.

Seconded.

I'm WDM all the way. Aren't ASIO drivers limited to just one card per application? I was under the impression that ASIO can only use one souncard at a time.

Also. I like my latency slider. That is not available in ASIO mode.

It's true that it depends on the interface and drivers. I use WDM with my Delta & have zero issues. Others prefer the ASIO with these cards, so my guess is they're both solid drivers.

My Mackie Onyx 400F: ASIO only with this interface. WDM/KS and Sonar don't play well together with this card's current drivers.

I've always used the WDM driver for my Delta 1010 on my DAW. On my laptop (occasionally used for editing and on-the-road rehearsal support), I use the ASIO4ALL driver for the built-in soundcard.

For true latency figure I would go download the latency check tool for asio drivers from www.centrance.com since many ASIO drivers report lower latencies than they the system actually has.

ASIO has fewer calories, but WDM tastes better.

Sorry for the brief interruption, carry on...

P.S. Teratec EWS88D with WDM here. I've heard you can shave off a little with ASIO, but I'v never bothered with it. I like the convenience of being able to slide the latency slider around right from SONAR. (Maybe I'm lazy?)

Edit: That latency checker in the preceding post might be a great way to check, though...

Edit: ...except it's only ASIO! Bummer, if it worked over WDM, you could use it to compare the two. You can always do the test manually in SONAR with a short pulse (tick, stick hit, etc.) and a loopback recording.

Another Delta 66 with ASIO here. I get pops and clicks with the WDM drivers.

Jon

I've seen some interesting observations, this one being particularly so:

I use wdm drivers, and since I have a MOTU 896, I also use ASIO4ALL. I get the benefits of Sonar and a PC using wdm drivers, and the motu sees the asio drivers.

hmmm...it's one or the other

Anyway - I've found that WDM has been my better option over the several cards that I've had. Most of the time, latency has be somewhat similar, and I DO prefer the latency slider to the extra outside "more clicks needed" dialog. Also, I've found that there are way more timing issues with ASIO, especially between audio and MIDI.

ORIGINAL: Blades

I've seen some interesting observations, this one being particularly so:

I use wdm drivers, and since I have a MOTU 896, I also use ASIO4ALL. I get the benefits of Sonar and a PC using wdm drivers, and the motu sees the asio drivers.

hmmm...it's one or the other

It's both. ASIO4ALL is a program for people who's audio program seems to work best with WDM/KS, but their hardware seems to work best with ASIO. With Sonar, I select WDM/KS, but my MOTU sees ASIO as translated by the free program ASIO4ALL.
From my understanding, most audio card companies include ASIO drivers written by the company, but for WDM, they basically defer to the Windows WDM/KS driver in xp. This may not be true in all or even many cases, but some companies seem to design their cards with the ASIO driver in mind.

Fortunately, Sonar can support WDM/KS or ASIO, but ASIO is, to my understanding, a "shell" written to talk to the programming that deals with the kernel level of a computer. WDM deals more directly at the kernel level, and is subsequently at a closer level than ASIO. This was not true with, for example Windows 98 and MME, which is why a program like ASIO was important for a company writing an audio program for a pc. When MS developed the WDM/KS part of the OS through xp, it was to make it more competetive with Apple's OS, which dealt with audio more efficiently back then. But by then, ASIO had already become firmly established with many in the pc community, despite it's limitations at that time.

From what I can tell, at this point, ASIO is probably unnecessary. But it allows Steinberg to stay a step ahead of everyone else, because ASIO is THEIR program, and, I think, they license it to others to use. (I'm assuming about the licensing ... I don't know that for certain.) But even ASIO has contiuned to improve, so it's now probably a toss up, as to which works most efficiently and at a lower latency.

Keep in mind, I'm a bass player, not an audio programmer. But this is my understanding of ASIO/WDM at this point. If I've said anything truly off the wall, I'm sure I'll be corrected ... I am hopeful gently. ;)

I've always used WDM is past versions of SONAR (SONAR 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5). I primarily use my Delta 66 and the WDM drivers perfrom as well, if not better than the ASIO. I also like the convenience of the handy latency slider too. I am currently using the .51 Delta drivers (the PT compatible ones), which have been performing very well without any problems.
But, I have been using ASIO mode exclusively, since I installed SONAR 6. Shouldn't we now be using ASIO, if we want to take advantge of the new Record Latency Adjustment (Advanced Audio Options), in SONAR 6? It seems to only work with and report latencies for ASIO. It seems ASIO is the way to go in SONAR 6 if you want to take advantage of record latency, in SONAR automatically.

RME Fireface with ASIO. When I Upgraded to Sonar 6, it used WDM by default and my audio sounded terrible. Sounded like a circular saw was on one of the tracks. I switched to ASIO and almost all is good. I did notice that in WDM mode, the I/O's were numbered correctly. Not so with ASIO.

ORIGINAL: Billy Buck
Shouldn't we now be using ASIO, is we want to take advantge of the new Record Latency Adjustment (Advanced Audio Options), in SONAR 6? It seems to only work with and report latencies for ASIO. It seems ASIO is the way to go in SONAR 6 if you want to take advantage of record latency, in SONAR automatically.

Really? I was under the impression that WDM did a better job of reporting intrinsic audio card latency than ASIO. So it comes as a surprise to me that ASIO is supported by this ahead of WDM, even moreso that WDM isn't supported! Is this really the case?

ORIGINAL: Billy Buck
Shouldn't we now be using ASIO, if we want to take advantge of the new Record Latency Adjustment (Advanced Audio Options), in SONAR 6? It seems to only work with and report latencies for ASIO. It seems ASIO is the way to go in SONAR 6 if you want to take advantage of record latency, in SONAR automatically.

I don't yet have Sonar 6, but from what I recall from this forum is that you can manually adjust that parameter for both ASIO and WDM, but only ASIO reports a number to set it automatically. I should probably dig up that post...

I've been using WDM with a MOTU 2408mk3 and Sonar...down to around 2.9 ms latency. I bump up the bar after the track starts to use Giga or other cpu intensive progs and during mixing.

So it comes as a surprise to me that ASIO is supported by this ahead of WDM, even moreso that WDM isn't supported! Is this really the case?

The way I understood it, it was enabled for ASIO specifically because of the timing issues that I was describing above and that WDM didn't need to be adjusted because the issue didn't exist in the same way.

But I was apprently wrong about what exactly ASIO4ALL is - where I thought it was just an ASIO driver for cards that didn't have one or who's driver was lousy.

Using ASIO with my RME DIGI 9652 with great results.

MOTU 828mkII, WDM, 1.3 ms. The ASIO drivers perform the same as WDM in my setup.

E-Mu 1820M - ASIO

Robert

ORIGINAL: JustMike

RME Fireface with ASIO. When I Upgraded to Sonar 6, it used WDM by default and my audio sounded terrible. Sounded like a circular saw was on one of the tracks. I switched to ASIO and almost all is good. I did notice that in WDM mode, the I/O's were numbered correctly. Not so with ASIO.

You got the latest drivers and you do mean KS- WDM not normal WDM yeah?

KS WDM works fine here, although I keep it ASIO as there is a bug with input naming on sonar5 - you end up with hundreds of multiple entries every time you re-run the profiler.

The nice this with ASIO on the fireface is you can change latencies on the fly - no hassle - however you can't get higher than about 20ms @44.1khz so for really long latencies you need to use WDM KS.

Kind regards

Dave Rich

I don't understand why people have the need to adjust the latency slider?? I use Asio and I have no latency issues.. I run 30-40 tracks somtimes with tons of effects running with no issues of lag.. with both the Delta 66s (running 2 at once) or the single Motu 24I/O. . Even with the Motu I have done 24 tracks in a live environment with plugins in place for 3 hours straight before with no issues.. I don't see why you'd need to move the slider..

ORIGINAL: Bugermass

I don't understand why people have the need to adjust the latency slider?? I use Asio and I have no latency issues.. I run 30-40 tracks somtimes with tons of effects running with no issues of lag.. with both the Delta 66s (running 2 at once) or the single Motu 24I/O. . Even with the Motu I have done 24 tracks in a live environment with plugins in place for 3 hours straight before with no issues.. I don't see why you'd need to move the slider..

I never understand these kinds of posts. Just because you don't feel the need doesn't mean nobody else does.

And as for WDM: it never worked on my system. I always use ASIO. The only thing I noticed is that the calculation of the input latency doesn't work properly when I use the S/PDIF input of my Terratec card. I wondered why I all of a sudden started to play ahead of the beat through my Bass Pod Pro ;)

Really, it does depend on the driver. Here's a list of some facts.

WDM/KS only works well with a WDM type driver.

Some Drivers are ASIO with WDM support tacked on. These should work better with ASIO. These possibly could sound different too for WDM. It seems it's not that easy to write a WDM driver that supports WDM. ASIO, GSIF etc equally well. Some manufacturers have taken the easier (?) path of specialising for ASIO and added some WDM support but with limitations; eg Emu.

WDM/KS doesn't entirely bypass Windows Audio (kmixer etc), but what is left in (some buffers) cannot affect the sound quality.

ASIO4ALL uses WDM/KS. It's an adapter to add an ASIO interface to a WDM type driver. How well it works depends on the driver just as Sonars WDM/KS option does.

WDM/KS is exclusive. It cannot work if the WDM driver is already in use. Similarly, Windows audio cannot work while the driver is used by something using WDM/KS. That's why the Microsoft software synth isn't available in Sonars midi list if using WDM/KS.

Although there are ASIO drivers with WDM additionally available. There are also WDM drivers with ASIO added. The design for WDM allows ASIO and other "User" interfaces to be provided - eg GSIF for Gigastudio. In many cases, these extra interfaces are not Exclusive. Windows sounds can still work while Sonar uses ASIO. Properly written (not easy), there is no reason to expect any significant difference between WDM/KS and ASIO with this driver type.

M-audio Delta card driver is an example of a WDM driver with ASIO added.
Emu 0404, 1212 etc are examples of ASIO driver with WDM added.

I have been getting blue screens with Delta 1010LT, and I get pops and clicks sometimes too.. only needing to increase latency to get rid of those pops and clicks...

so.. I wonder.. if I switch to ASIO, is that a totally different driver? The blue screens I get while using Sonar Producer 8.0.2 and Delta 1010 LT maybe just WDM driver? Maybe If I switch to ASIO would solve that problem?

By using ASIO or WDM, I see no difference other than instead of having 12 in and 10 out, I get only 6 in and 5 out with ASIO??? The sound quality is the same for both, both use the same ammount of cpu consumation.

I wonder what Sonar Recommands to use.. WDM or ASIO?

M-Audio article on setting it up on ASIO: http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=support.faq&ID=a2d09b4b42075b2b9df638671975a8b4

I haven't read the whole thread but so far the consensus seeems to be in league with my experience. It all depends on on your DAW and interface. WDM never worked well for me ASIO works fine.

ORIGINAL: Shadeline
I have been getting blue screens with Delta 1010LT, and I get pops and clicks sometimes too.. only needing to increase latency to get rid of those pops and clicks...

BSOD's are not a good thing and can indicate a driver issue or even a system issue (bad RAM or overheated CPU?).
What Delta driver are you using? I've been using the 5.10.0.5069 with a lot of success for a long while now. I can't
even remember the last time I had a BSOD and I use my DAW & Delta 66 card virtually every day. The only time I get ops & clicks is when I am at 64 samples and really stressing the CPU (80%-100%). Make sure your audio card is not sharing an IRQ. The Delta's are notorious for causing pops/clicks when sharing an IRQ with a video card or USB Host controller. Getting rid of unneeded IRQ overhead (like disabling unneeded USB ports, disabling onboard audio, Lan, floppy drive, etc from your BIOS) will go a long way to increasing system performance. Simply changing the PCI slot can work wonders.
As far as WDM or ASIO it depends a lot on your audio drivers. Both WDM & ASIO work well for me, but I get slightly better performance with WDM (plus I like using SONAR's buffer slider for quick latency changes on the fly) so I use WDM.

Good luck

ASIO has always seemed to work better for me with My Delta44.

Dan

Interesting thread. I found Jim Y's reply particularly interesting.

I have a Delta 66 and find the WDM/KS drivers to work better with Sonar and Project 5. What's interesting though is when I use VST's in standalone (or no host) mode they work best with the ASIO drivers for some reason. Maybe this is because of the way the M-Audio cards have built their driver architecture as Jim Y stated.

I still like to use the old GBH (grievous bodily harm); if it ain't doin' what I want it to, I'll just beat the c**p out of it!

No seriously, I use ASIO with Phonic Helix firewire, works good. Yes, only one soundcard at a time,
latency can be adjusted very easily in the helix control panel. I have it set to 4.0ms at all times.
Stream buffer depth is 2000 µs

as i just moved from s7pe to s8pe i have also moved to ASIO drivers (by force) due to wdm drivers not allowing 24 bit recording in s8pe (very strange) - i ran WDM all the way up to this point with imperfect contentment.
note: (mabe a win dnld i need but aint going down that road) im on xpsp2 last full update was NOV 2008 and i dont/wont connect to the web on this machine due to not having any antivi on it and it works killer.

the latency slider is locked out with ASIO drivers so if you have a weak machine and need to creep up all the time it may be WDM for you
ASIO is stable.

the soundcard im running :RME Fireface 800 firewire (and recommend this product)

the 2 drivers give you a choice if your soundcard is having arough time of it mostly

I use ASIO4ALL in 7.02 because I use multiple drivers and I get lower latency times and far more stability with ASIO4ALL than I do the (Alesis) WDM drivers.
Yes I know that ASIO4ALL uses the WDM drivers so this shouldn't be true but trust me it is, at least on my system anyway.

I'm demoing V8 at the moment and one of the things I was interested in was if using WDM drivers would be better now. The simple answer is it's far worse while ASIO4ALL has got even better. Using ASO4ALL I can now consistently run 5.3 msecs latency times while using both drivers and under 2 msecs while recording with just the single driver. Using WDM I can't even get rid of pops and crackles until I'm above 10msecs using both drivers and the single driver isn't much better. So far not one Alesis induced BSOD either and I've been trying to provoke it.........

the latency slider is locked out with ASIO drivers so if you have a weak machine and need to creep up all the time it may be WDM for you
ASIO is stable.

This is by design, latency times when using ASIO drivers is set via the sample buffer settings in your interfaces ASIO panel. Accessible from the Options->Audio page