Post by Timur on Feb 25, 2006 1:43:56 GMT
This is the thread I posted on the Creative user forum:
Hey there! This is a hint on how to get better ASIO performance out of your X-Fi card and a petition to Creative to give their ASIO drivers a major overhaul. While the card seems to be quite good and the WDM drivers are really fast the ASIO drivers really leave alot to be desired performance-wise.
The original ASIO drivers can hardly handle anything below 5ms and starts to crackle with a cpu load as low as 55% on a A64 @ 2650 MHz. Even with higher latency values you get far too many "occasional" cracks and pops. And don't you ever dare to use input monitoring of the Console Launcher it will drag your performance down considerably (output is ok though). Generally the Creative drivers perform worse than those of my M-Audio Audiphile 24/96. That is quite a pitty because the underlying WDM drivers seem to be performance champions.
This is where ASIO4ALL enter the arena, a small free general purpose ASIO driver (23kb in size) written by a solitary german coder in his free-time. With ASIO4ALL I can use latencies as low as ! 0.83ms ! with Ableton Live 5 cracklefree, yes that means below 1ms! Cubase SX is a resource hog (especially with all those copyprotection routines) and generally needs more cpu load and a bit higher latencies for doing the same thing. But setting up an audio-track with GuitarRig 2 as insert effect at 0.83ms with the cpu running downclocked in Cool&Quiet mode runs flawlessly! In Live 5 even when I drive the cpu near to 100% so that the user interface performs all jerky I still have crystal clear audio output. That is with several Reaktor5 VST plugins and audio-tracks running while I am listening to my own input through software (not hardware based direct monitoring).
Adding to all that you can switch from kernel buffers to hardware buffers. Things become a little more complicated then, but once you know what you're doing you can squeeze upto ! 30% less cpu ! load out of your rig. The actuall win depends on what you have loaded, under heavy load it will be more like 10%. The downsides are that you have to use 2-5ms higher latencies and recording only works up 48KHz, but it's great for mixing because the extra cpu power might just be what you need to have everything running at once. And I am not talking about theoretical numbers here, but what I have seen myself. If you try it your own don't get confused by the audio-application still showing the same cpu load, your task-manager will tell you otherwise. I can set up several audio-tracks plus effects in Live5 at 0-3% cpu load while Live itself still thinks it needs 30% as if it was still using kernel buffer or the creative driver.
Now as the crowning feature you can use upto ! 192KHz ! for both playback and recording in any mode! Most likely you will never need this, but it's a nice option to have which the Creative driver only offers as playback for DVD-Audio in Entertainment mode. Actually it doesn't matter what mode your X-Fi uses anyway it's always the same with ASIO4ALL. But using Audio Creation mode is still recommended because you can use the Creative Console Launcher then to route channels the way you like. But instead of using the "ASIO" tab you have to use the "Multi-channel Wave" tab (or whatever it is called in the english version).
I really hope that Creative will optimize their ASIO driver anywhere near those high performance measure soon. ASIO4ALL just saved me the decision if to keep the X-Fi at all, because I really see no sense in paying that much money for a pure entertainment/gamer solution. The original ASIO drivers by Creative use a little bit less cpu load, but what use in that if you're hearing pops and crackles all over the place?! In the end ASIO4ALL gives better performance and more options, and all that done by a one-man free-time project!
---
In short: Great Job done!!!
Hey there! This is a hint on how to get better ASIO performance out of your X-Fi card and a petition to Creative to give their ASIO drivers a major overhaul. While the card seems to be quite good and the WDM drivers are really fast the ASIO drivers really leave alot to be desired performance-wise.
The original ASIO drivers can hardly handle anything below 5ms and starts to crackle with a cpu load as low as 55% on a A64 @ 2650 MHz. Even with higher latency values you get far too many "occasional" cracks and pops. And don't you ever dare to use input monitoring of the Console Launcher it will drag your performance down considerably (output is ok though). Generally the Creative drivers perform worse than those of my M-Audio Audiphile 24/96. That is quite a pitty because the underlying WDM drivers seem to be performance champions.
This is where ASIO4ALL enter the arena, a small free general purpose ASIO driver (23kb in size) written by a solitary german coder in his free-time. With ASIO4ALL I can use latencies as low as ! 0.83ms ! with Ableton Live 5 cracklefree, yes that means below 1ms! Cubase SX is a resource hog (especially with all those copyprotection routines) and generally needs more cpu load and a bit higher latencies for doing the same thing. But setting up an audio-track with GuitarRig 2 as insert effect at 0.83ms with the cpu running downclocked in Cool&Quiet mode runs flawlessly! In Live 5 even when I drive the cpu near to 100% so that the user interface performs all jerky I still have crystal clear audio output. That is with several Reaktor5 VST plugins and audio-tracks running while I am listening to my own input through software (not hardware based direct monitoring).
Adding to all that you can switch from kernel buffers to hardware buffers. Things become a little more complicated then, but once you know what you're doing you can squeeze upto ! 30% less cpu ! load out of your rig. The actuall win depends on what you have loaded, under heavy load it will be more like 10%. The downsides are that you have to use 2-5ms higher latencies and recording only works up 48KHz, but it's great for mixing because the extra cpu power might just be what you need to have everything running at once. And I am not talking about theoretical numbers here, but what I have seen myself. If you try it your own don't get confused by the audio-application still showing the same cpu load, your task-manager will tell you otherwise. I can set up several audio-tracks plus effects in Live5 at 0-3% cpu load while Live itself still thinks it needs 30% as if it was still using kernel buffer or the creative driver.
Now as the crowning feature you can use upto ! 192KHz ! for both playback and recording in any mode! Most likely you will never need this, but it's a nice option to have which the Creative driver only offers as playback for DVD-Audio in Entertainment mode. Actually it doesn't matter what mode your X-Fi uses anyway it's always the same with ASIO4ALL. But using Audio Creation mode is still recommended because you can use the Creative Console Launcher then to route channels the way you like. But instead of using the "ASIO" tab you have to use the "Multi-channel Wave" tab (or whatever it is called in the english version).
I really hope that Creative will optimize their ASIO driver anywhere near those high performance measure soon. ASIO4ALL just saved me the decision if to keep the X-Fi at all, because I really see no sense in paying that much money for a pure entertainment/gamer solution. The original ASIO drivers by Creative use a little bit less cpu load, but what use in that if you're hearing pops and crackles all over the place?! In the end ASIO4ALL gives better performance and more options, and all that done by a one-man free-time project!
---
In short: Great Job done!!!
