I recently bought a Behringer UCU 222 and a NI Traktor Audio 2 sound card. Both are external devices. I notice that folk on this forum talk about the ASIO4All driver. Have I wasted my money? Is the ASIO4All good enough for general use?
Do you face any issues with that interfaces and GigPerformer?
Both the Behringer and the Traktor work fine. I was just thinking of simplifying my setup by using ASIO4All instead of having to plug in one of the other physical sound cards. My concern is this - does ASIO4ALL offer the same low latency levels as the external ones?
I am on Mac, sorry I can not help with ASIO4ALL
Hi Alan,
as far as i know (and as i read), the ASIO4ALL driver is more some kind of expedient for people without native ASIO drivers, such as PC/Laptops with internal soundchip and WDM-drivers only.
Say, when you want to use ASIO-based software but you don’t have an audio interface which is capable to provide ASIO-functionality.
This explains it quite well:
WDM drivers are also capable of excellent performance with some applications (particularly Sonar), but generally take more setting up to achieve the lowest latency values, since you can often choose both the number of buffers and their sizes. Where and how to adjust these depends on the individual application (see next section). If your audio interface only has WDM drivers that provide mediocre performance but your application is ASIO-compatible, try downloading Michael Tippach’s freeware ASIO4ALL driver (http://michael.tippach.bei.t-online.de/asio4all). This is a universal ASIO overlay that sits on top of any device’s existing WDM driver to provide it with full ASIO support, and often far lower latencies.
(taken from Optimising The Latency Of Your PC Audio Interface )
Maybe. But at the cost of CPU load as the case may be. ASIO4ALL is not a real replacement for a good audio interface, even less for live usage. So getting a solid audio interface is definitely the better solution. If the Behringer and the Traktor work fine I think you did everything right. If you don’t want to carry these with you (say for a rehearsal) and the ASIO4ALL does a good job, there’s nothing to say against that, but I would not rely on ASIO4ALL for a gig.
ASIO4ALL is a software driver that can help with latency in some cases. It is not an audio interface though. A good audio interface will offer the quality and features that cannot be replaced by software alone.
Basically apples and oranges. ASIO4ALL needs an audio interface (even your internal sound card may be one) to work at all.
ASIO4ALL can, however, help in cases where the native ASIO driver of your audio interface has issues and ASIO4ALL may work better. You would then use ASIO4ALL with your audio interface instead off the driver that came with your device.
It seems that the $30 Behringer UCU 222 doesn’t come with its own ASIO driver. In that case, Asio4All is the only option for Windows. I’ve had some good results with Asio4All. I was looking into buying the Key-Largo keyboard mixer by Radial, but I read someone’s post that Raidal actually recommends Asio4All for the Key-Largo though it comes with its own ASIO driver.
Currently I use the iConnectivity Audio 4+ which gives me lower latency than Asio4All as it should.