Asio and external sound cards or audio devices

[Double Tap]

I work entirely in my laptop, except occasionally I use an Akai MPC mini midi controller.

Do I need an external sound card or audio device?

The laptop has no sound card - it was designed for work, not music (okay, it's got a graphics card so not just for work). I found I was getting mad latency on some things when I was using the Windows audio driver so I discovered that there was this thing called Asio and I should use Asio4all.

Except Asio4all is annoying because it crashes the audio driver in my web browser, so I can't watch the tutorials and follow/copy things in my DAW.

Searching reveals that Asio4all is a fix for people who don't have an audio device. It looks like the Akai didn't come with any Asio drivers - I'm not entirely sure tbqh. I'm not actually sure if a midi controller counts as an audio device in this instance.

[planetearth]

You really need an audio interface if you're going to do anything in the real-time recording and playback of multi-channel, high-definition audio. The laptop's onboard soundchip will eventually fail you. It may happen by the time you add your fourth audio track to your project, or when you add your third instrument plug-in. But it will fail you.

ASIO4All is not really an audio interface driver per se; it's a wrapper for the driver you already have. It's not ASIO, but it tries to make the driver you use look and behave like ASIO. But it can only push you soundchip driver (and the Windows audio subsystem) as far as they would have already gone without it -- which is invariably not as far as ASIO can go. ASIO was developed to be more efficient than the drivers and systems that came before it, and it's still used for a reason.

You don't have to get an expensive audio interface, and the used market has some pretty good deals. But you'll eventually want one because the pops, clicks and dropouts will become more than you can bear.

Steve

[Double Tap]

You really need an audio interface if you're going to do anything in the real-time recording and playback of multi-channel, high-definition audio. The laptop's onboard soundchip will eventually fail you. It may happen by the time you add your fourth audio track to your project, or when you add your third instrument plug-in. But it will fail you.

ASIO4All is not really an audio interface driver per se; it's a wrapper for the driver you already have. It's not ASIO, but it tries to make the driver you use look and behave like ASIO. But it can only push you soundchip driver (and the Windows audio subsystem) as far as they would have already gone without it -- which is invariably not as far as ASIO can go. ASIO was developed to be more efficient than the drivers and systems that came before it, and it's still used for a reason.

You don't have to get an expensive audio interface, and the used market has some pretty good deals. But you'll eventually want one because the pops, clicks and dropouts will become more than you can bear.

Steve

Thanks very much Steve - I hadn't understood that about Asio4all. I had originally assumed that if I wasn't doing any audio recording then I wouldn't need an audio interface. But I think I understand that you mean even plinking a few keys on the Akai is real-time recording.

Would it affect stuff that's already in the DAW eg programmed midi or audio clips? I get drop outs and sometimes latency on stuff that's programmed in midi, or sometimes when I put effects on an audio clip. Is that also because of the driver/audio interface? Or is it more likely because of the DAW or the effect plugin? I can see that some things take longer to render (ie when I'm flattening the processed audio onto a new audio track) than others depending on how much they are being processed - I had assumed that was down to my CPU/RAM but could it be related to the sound chip/driver etc?

[planetearth]

You really need an audio interface if you're going to do anything in the real-time recording and playback of multi-channel, high-definition audio. The laptop's onboard soundchip will eventually fail you. It may happen by the time you add your fourth audio track to your project, or when you add your third instrument plug-in. But it will fail you.

ASIO4All is not really an audio interface driver per se; it's a wrapper for the driver you already have. It's not ASIO, but it tries to make the driver you use look and behave like ASIO. But it can only push you soundchip driver (and the Windows audio subsystem) as far as they would have already gone without it -- which is invariably not as far as ASIO can go. ASIO was developed to be more efficient than the drivers and systems that came before it, and it's still used for a reason.

You don't have to get an expensive audio interface, and the used market has some pretty good deals. But you'll eventually want one because the pops, clicks and dropouts will become more than you can bear.

Steve

Thanks very much Steve - I hadn't understood that about Asio4all. I had originally assumed that if I wasn't doing any audio recording then I wouldn't need an audio interface. But I think I understand that you mean even plinking a few keys on the Akai is real-time recording.

Would it affect stuff that's already in the DAW eg programmed midi or audio clips? I get drop outs and sometimes latency on stuff that's programmed in midi, or sometimes when I put effects on an audio clip. Is that also because of the driver/audio interface? Or is it more likely because of the DAW or the effect plugin? I can see that some things take longer to render (ie when I'm flattening the processed audio onto a new audio track) than others depending on how much they are being processed - I had assumed that was down to my CPU/RAM but could it be related to the sound chip/driver etc?

If you're recording MIDI parts into your DAW and playing them out through a software plug-in instrument (VSTi), then the pops, clicks, dropouts, and latency issues are because you're using the computer's built-in soundchip. It simply was never designed for this, especially under the stress of everything else that's running on your computer, such as anti-virus software and all the junk that loads at startup (most of which you don't even need).

If you were just recording MIDI clips to play back through an external, hardware synthesizer, then it wouldn't matter what you used for audio on the computer. But as soon as you ask the computer to turn those MIDI clips into audio (through a software plug-in) -- and then you add effects to that instrument -- you're asking your computer's processor to do a lot more. An audio interface offloads a lot of the work from the computer's processor, which translates into no pops, clicks, dropouts or latency issues...unless you add a lot more tracks and effects and tax the computer's processor (or the ASIO subsystem) again. But with an audio interface, you get a lot more room to add those tracks.

An audio interface won't affect the time it takes to render tracks or files; those are done by the CPU, as you assumed. But an interface will allow you to play more tracks in real time, without having to render (or "freeze") them, which you may be doing to minimize the pops, clicks, and latency issues. The fewer tracks you have to render, the more flexibility you have when arranging your song, because the tracks will still be "live" as MIDI tracks, and not rendered as static audio tracks.

Steve

[Double Tap]

Amazing. Thanks so much. Just when I thought I had a handle on what my known unknowns are, something like this pops up. I'll add audio interfaces to my shopping list...