What is Asio4all
ASIO4all is one of those software applications that you didn’t know you needed until you had a problem.
That problem is audio latency!
I’ve used ASIO4all for quite a few years now.
What is ASIO?
ASIO stands for Audio Stream Input Output. Steinberg developed it to improve the way Windows handled audio and sound interfaces.
It offers the best sound quality, as there is no compression or resampling. If you want more detail and information about ASIO check out my article. ASIO will also enable the reduction of latency in an audio system.
Audio latency
If you have used your laptop for musical production you will definitely have experienced latency.
If you use a digital audio workstation (DAW), say Ableton Live, for instance, if you call up an internal instrument or a VST synthesizer and then play a note, latency is the delay you get when you press the key, to when you hear the sound through your sound system.
It can vary from a few milliseconds to over a hundred milliseconds. It’s always there on a system but you’ll probably not notice it as much if you are just playing back stuff.
Ideally, you want to get latency as low as you can. It probably won’t cause you much of an issue if you can get it to around 10 milliseconds. Anything below this is likely to cause pop, crackles and other problems.
What is ASIO4all
ASIO4all is a universal sound-card driver that enables you to use ASIO if the manufacturers haven’t written a specific ASIO sound-card driver for your specific hardware and operating system.
Sound interfaces for music
If you have got a sound interface that is designed for music then it should have ASIO drivers for it. In that case, you should use those and you should find the performance better than ASIO4all.
If you need more convincing, have a read of my article on sound interfaces and you’ll see just how much better they are for musicians.
Should I install ASIO4all?
If you haven’t got anything better then ASIO4all is better than the Windows drivers.
You may not have much choice if you are using something like Ableton Live on a laptop that doesn’t have any ASIO drivers for the onboard sound. Also, you may not be aware that there are better drivers available that support ASIO. You should always do a search as things often get updated.
Several people have reported that they have found a Realtek driver that supports ASIO and that it works with various Dell, Asus and HP hardware. Ideally if there is a driver that supports ASIO it is better to use that as it has been written specifically for that hardware as ASIO4all tries to work with any hardware, which is obviously a difficult task.
Does Windows 10 have ASIO drivers?
No Windows 10 doesn’t come with any ASIO drivers. However, the hardware on your laptop or PC may have ASIO drivers written for it.
The best thing to do is to check your manufacturer’s website for any audio drivers marked ASIO.
How do I download ASIO4all?
Just go to the official ASIO4all webpage page. Click on download and unzip the file and run.
It doesn’t get much easier than that and it’s free as well. It has got to the stage when it is actually finished and 2.15 is the final release
Is ASIO4all available for the Mac?
No, there is no Mac version because you don’t need ASIO4all for the Mac. It was written to get around a Windows problem in the way it deals with sound,
With Windows, all its audio processing has to go through Windows systems. So even a simple audio processing task gets stuck because of everything else Windows is doing.
The Mac doesn’t have this problem. It uses something better than the Windows method called core audio.
ASIO4 all alternative
The best ASIO4all alternative is the driver that has been written for your specific hardware.
If there is a driver that supports ASIO, you are better to use that. Even if ASIO4all appears to work on your system it could cause problems with other VST plug-ins and things you may run.
FlexASIO
FlexASIO is an alternative to ASIO4all. While there are several ASIO4all alternatives, you have to pay for some of them.
FlexASIO and ASIO4all are both free. Although I’m not against paying for software, especially if it’s worth it (Ableton Live, for instance, replaces about £4,000 worth of my old studio hardware!)
The fact they are free does give you the ability to try them out and decide what’s best for you. You may find FlexASIO is better for you but in my opinion, it doesn’t do anything for me that ASIO4all does, so I’ll carry on using ASIO4all.
Changing the settings
Once you have ASIO4all installed you should tweak the settings to get the best performance.
How you do this depends on what software you are using. In Ableton Live, firstly click on the “Options” tab and select “Preferences…” at the bottom of the menu that appears. If you are using a different DAW, then find the page that does the same thing. You need to find the option to select ASIO4all from the menu.
In the box that opens up, select the “Audio” tab
Next, click on the “Hardware Setup” button.
This opens up the ASIO4all control panel.
You might have to select it for recording and playback. Also, you might then have to play around with the settings to see how low you can set the latency delay.
If you set it too low, you will hear some crackles or feedback-type sounds and pops. It depends on the size of the buffer, how much processing power your application takes, how many channels and VSTs you’re trying to run and the memory in your system.
It’s just a case of trying to see what works best on your system.
In Propellerhead Reason, select “Preferences” from the “Edit” menu. Next, click on the “Audio” tab and the box shown below will open up.
Finally, click on the “Control panel…” button and the ASIO4all panel will open up.
Final thoughts about ASIO4all
Undoubtedly, the best thing to do if you experience latency problems is to check what audio driver you are using. You can do this with Ableton Live by selecting the “Audio” tab. There you will see what drivers are available on the system.
Before you use ASIO4all, you should try the drivers that your manufacturer provides if there aren’t any that support ASIO and if there aren’t any available to download, you will have to use ASIO4all or an alternative to reduce the latency on your particular system.