Getting ASIO to work

John_Yossarian

Hi, I was wondering how to get the kxASIO to work? I got AC97 input (microphone) working regularly, but I can't get kxASIO to work for the life of me. ASIO4ALL works, but that's not what I want.

What I'm trying to do is get two or more inputs working on kxASIO (singing & guitar DI w/ DSPs, 8 drum triggers, etc) but I cannot get one microphone input to work.


Any help or prods in the right direction are appreciated and I thank you in advance!

John_Yossarian

Bump.

Alright, I've been experimenting a lot and reading a lot and I think I realized something.

What I'm trying to do is impossible (with Soundblasters, anyway) All analog inputs are analyzed by AC97 before going into the DSP portion, meaning you can't split all 8 of your analog signals into ASIO.

You experience this when doing teamspeak/skype/ventrilo. Ever do a prank call on there? Or just record some hilarious things? You cannot record wave out (what you hear) and talk (mic/line in) at the same time due to the limitations of AC97. If you try, you will transmit wave out (what you hear) and everyone will get pissed off at you. Same thing, different instance.

Right now I'm running a test bed setting with three (3) soundcards.
1) Motherboard's card (Realtek HD something, in a Asus P5K)
2) Soundblaster Live! 5.1 (E880)
3) Soundblaster Live! (dunno the specifics)

I'm able to run all these under ASIO at the same time and achieve 11ms input/11ms output timing for some very fast triggering.

However, in layman's terms, I think with the AC97, what this means basically is that you can only use ASIO for 2 mono sources or 1 stereo source. Per card.

My motherboard manual briefly mentions something about my crappy Realtek (which gets nasty electrical interference [mouse, video card, etc], btw, might need to reground my mobo) about "multi-streaming technology that simultaneously sends different audio streams to different destinations."
If this is true or not, I don't know. I do notice, however, in sndvol32.exe that I can pick more than one recording source (line in AND microphone) as opposed to the soundblasters where I must pick ONE source in sndvol32.

So basically: 2 mono ASIO sources per AC97 style card. Is there any card that allows for all the analog inputs (more than 2 mono) to be streamed under ASIO? Currently I'm using ASIO4ALL and it's working decent. I'd rather use the kX drivers and toolset to be honest.

Correct me if I'm wrong anywhere but through reading and experiments, I've reached the conclusion (concur with me if I'm correct!) that AC97 = 2 mono ASIO streams only.

Maddogg6

This is true on SBLives - Audigy (or at least A2ZS') have ability to record 2 discrete stereo AC97 sources via the AC97-2 (aka 'UDA') codec and Lex's updated proFx plugins.

BUT...
SPDIF inputs are not AC97 based - so, if you can connect those, you can get more than 1 stereo pair to record at a time. And it'll probably sound better too, as AC97 codec kinda sux (compared to SPDIF)
For instance - you can find mic preamps and guitar processors with SPDIF outs.

TravelRec.

And you have to solder some optical receiver interfaces to the card´s AUD_EXT to make use of the SPDIF digital inputs. Suggestion is here: kX-project support site by TravelRec.

John_Yossarian

Hello! Quick update before I have to go to school.

Woke up this morning, wondering if MIC IN were actually stereo connections since all the cheap-o 1/8" microphones I've seen have stereo males. Nope, the stereo male is just for compatibility should you plug it into a stereo input. It was a stupid idea, really, but pre-amped (albeit low quality) stereo inputs would be nice.

LINE IN, of course, is a stereo connection, got 6 independent ASIO streams. Keep in mind this is with the stock Creative drivers, three sound cards, and ASIO4ALL.

I went to TravelRec's site (very nice, by the way) and was bombarded with a plethora of projects and information. Wicked!

Is the hardware already on the card to support a SPDIF input (optical or coxial) minus the interface, which would be the female connector, a few capacitors and an odd resistor? I'm skeptical... well, no, using Creative's drivers, there isn't an additional input under Ableton Live for ASIO4ALL, I assume you are able to utilize the additional input using the kX drivers under the kXASIO channels (with a bit of routing)?


Also, not to stray off topic or anything, but other higher priced sound cards have hardware DSP mixing and mixing software with a different IC other than the AC97? Are these cards generally better? Independent input and outputs? Kernel streaming? Any thoughts?

Err, got to get to class!

Doug W

There are cards with better overall electronic stuff than the Creative cards for sure, but there is nothing out there that is as chocked full of pure goodness as the kX drivers. All other sound card drivers are just blah in comparison.

Stick with the kX drivers and your happiness factor will grow tenfold and your personal and business relations will also improve. This is just a rough paraphrase of something I remember from the help files.

Max M.

>Stick with the kX drivers and your happiness factor will grow tenfold and your personal and business relations will also improve.