HOWTO : Use ASIO4ALL (an ASIO wrapper) in WinUAE

[NewDeli]

...and in other applications

First, I should mention that obtaining a better audio experience with an ASIO wrapper compared to WASAPI or even to DSOUND -DirectSound is not guaranteed, especially if your audio card is not from a professional series.

Also, you may loose some control over the applications volume, aka the audio output in such manner is concealed from Windows, to a certain degree.

While ASIO4ALL may help if you're experiencing cracks, stuttering audio in WinUAE despite Sound Buffer being gradually increased, it cannot turn your cheap AC97 chip into a high-end Soundblaster card.

If you can't hear anything (a red cross indicates it), chances are another application is using it. Close the other application and restart WinUAE. It's better to avoid having say, WinAmp in the background, even if it's not playing songs.

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For now, download ASIO4ALL in your language and install it (preferably with the offline mixer)

To be able to trigger the ASIO4ALL interface from audio players (winamp typically) - output options, you will need the ASIO Output Plug-in. Download it from here (site is in Japanese, but very straightforward, see point 4 for dl link).

Read the short documentation

There is no icon to start the online mixer (not unlike the popular AC3 filter, you may experiment with the offline one), and you won't see it in the SysTray if it's not active.

For WinUAE to see the ASIO4ALL interface, it will need portaudio_x86.dll to be dropped in the same folder where its executable is. While Back2Roots are working to put winuae.net back online (we love it when you're doing such things, guys ), you may download the .dll from here.

Choose
PortAudio: [ASIO] ASIO4ALL v2
from WinUAE Sound tab

From either mixer (online or offline), switch to Expert mode and set the parameters as follow :

Activate ASIO for the proper audio device (if like me, you have an AC97 chip + a creative soundcard, only activate the device linked to your speakers, for me : Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS, no need to activate it for SPDIF or for recording). There should be a square and an arrow lit (Cf. pic.).

As for the various expert settings, I may tell you which are mine, but it's better if you refer to the documentation : I could

• Tick hardware buffer (but it seems to increase -not decrease the CPU load by 2%)
• Set the ASIO buffer as low as 448 units (don't fret if you need to set this higher)
• Set the buffer delay to 4ms

Fortunately, latency compensation was set to 32 samples for me, so I didn't have to figure out what to put in there.

I had a bad audio issue with the speakers configured to 5.1, so I went on setting them to 4/4.1 via the Creative Audio Console, the very reason why WinUAE Sound set to Cloned Stereo would work best with the ASIO4ALL mixer, INMHO.


Thanks and happy lamulating !

[prowler]

Thanks for the guide, Deleauvive!

[tero]

@Deleauvive
Creative SB Audigy 2 should have native portaudio
just like my SB live 1024 (No need for ASIO4ALL then)
I guess you're using Original drivers on modern (XP/Vista/7) system?
You may want to have a look here:

http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/index.php?language=en

It's a unofficial driver but (for me) it works better then the CreativeDrivers

[NewDeli]

I've tried the KX drivers before but didn't like them, too few of the features I mostly need.

The web distributed drivers from Creative aren't too bloated, and the components are well integrated with Windows . Also I am not sure KX would work fine with the AC3 filter. It's very important that my speakers switch to SPDIF output properly when I play a BDRip or similar content. What's more, they come with a nice software update tool.

Same story goes with with AMD/Radeon VS Omega drivers, the official drivers don't do much really in terms of tweaks and overclocking, but what they do, they do just fine. With the recent releases of these fine official drivers, I don't myself feel it necessary to seek for "optimized" ones.

See also this post on how I managed to ouput ScummVM midi from a virtual SoftSynth, following Sh00nay idea and an online tutorial.

There's something "unauthorized" I did to my Creative drivers though, and that's installing the hack to be able to plug gamepads at the back on my Audigy.

[NewDeli]

Next chapter ?
HOWTO : Alt+tab in style

Stay tuned !

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Deleauvive

HOWTO : Alt+tab in style

That'll be worth waiting for!