This DirectX Setup utility shows which of your soundcards have Native DirectSound drivers. Here my AWE64 Gold is OK, but the Event Gina doesn't comply.
Martin Walker explores the pros and cons of different soundcard drivers, fixes a problem with his IRQs, and still finds time to read a couple of books as well.
Soundcard drivers are not an exciting subject, but nevertheless an important one, since they are the vital glue between audio applications (such as sequencers and hard disk recorders) and the hardware that actually transforms the digital signals into music. There are now several different flavours of driver available, and the differences between these can cause a lot of confusion and frustration at times.
The most common form of driver is still the Windows Multimedia one (also known as MME, after the original MultiMedia Extensions built into Windows 3.1). This has the inherent restriction of stereo operation, which means any soundcard that has more than two inputs or two outputs must normally appear to applications as a set of stereo track pairs. Another disadvantage of these drivers is their relatively high latency (the delay between action and reaction), which makes many music applications seem sluggish. The main advantage is that almost every soundcard is likely to have this type of driver, making it a universal standard.
ASIO drivers were originally developed by Steinberg as part of the VST interface, and have been designed from the ground up specifically for mixing together multiple tracks of audio in real time. Steinberg provide a general purpose ASIO Multimedia driver to interface to standard drivers, but various soundcard manufacturers have also released hardware‑specific ASIO drivers for their soundcards. The main benefit of having these is much‑reduced latency — typically dropping from 500‑700mS right down to 100mS or even less.
Latency is mainly a problem during recording, when an input signal will always be heard slightly late if it is being monitored via the software. However, many soundcard manufacturers now allow the input signal to be directly monitored via the soundcard hardware, so that there will be no audible delay. The only disadvantage of this is that you cannot hear an input signal with real‑time effects, unless you use DSP effects on the soundcard which don't go through the software plug‑in process (Lexicon's Studio and Yamaha's DSP Factory and SW1000XG are examples of this).
However, another big improvement when using hardware‑specific ASIO drivers is general responsiveness. Transport controls such as Play and Record operate almost instantly, with none of the sluggishness of Multimedia drivers. Altering the position of knobs and faders is also far more immediate, making mixdown and automation a far more pleasurable experience, and recording and playback meters will also reflect the current audio levels much more closely.
Live And Direct
Music On The Internet includes a guide to over 700 web sites of interest to musicians.
The third category of soundcard drivers is DirectSound, which is becoming increasingly important. Several years ago, games were held back on the PC by the higher overhead imposed on graphic and sound calls when running under the Windows operating system. Due to this, the vast majority of game developers stayed with DOS, so that they could directly manipulate the PC at a much lower level, giving far more scope for a fast‑moving, action‑packed experience. The downside was that they also had to write a whole raft of drivers to support specific graphic cards and soundcards, which gave them a lot of tedious extra work.
Microsoft soon realised that to attract more game developers to the Windows environment, they needed to provide them with a way to get to graphic and sound functions at a much lower level than was previously possible, to provide a faster response and easier coding. DirectX technology provided just this, with components like DirectDraw and Direct3D for graphics, and DirectSound and DirectSound3D for sound. DirectSound was written to provide a low‑latency way to mix together multiple audio streams for merging into a stereo output.
There are two forms of DirectSound support. Native drivers have been specifically written with DirectSound in mind, and will appear in every application that supports the DirectSound standard. Some applications will also allow emulated support, which allows other soundcards to work, but with increased latency (and increased likelihood of crashes in some cases). You can check whether your soundcard has Native support by running the DXSETUP.EXE utility which is supplied as part of DirectX 5 (the new DirectX 6 version doesn't show this information).
If the manufacturer has submitted its driver to Microsoft for thorough testing it may also be certified, although many don't bother due to the extra time and expense. An uncertified driver rarely compromises performance, and in many cases the newest uncertified drivers available from a web site may give better performance than older certified ones.
A Richer Experience
Initially, having DirectSound‑compatible drivers for your soundcard was far more important for game players, but such drivers are now beginning to surface in a variety of more professional music applications. Steinberg's VST version 3.55 introduced the ASIO DirectX driver, which can be used instead of the ASIO Multimedia one if your soundcard has Native DirectSound compatible drivers (but not emulated ones). It has the advantage of lower latency, and several applications can access this driver simultaneously, which is ideal if you want to attempt running a software synth and MIDI + Audio sequencer side by side through the same soundcard. The big drawback is that you cannot record audio when using it. To give you an idea of the improvement, I set up my AWE64 Gold in Cubase, and measured a latency of 750mS with the ASIO Multimedia driver, but only 204mS after choosing the ASIO DirectX driver.
Other applications that use DirectSound to provide a richer experience are real‑time software synths like Native Instruments' Generator and the new version 1.5 of Seer Systems' Reality (see page 244), the Nemesys Gigasampler software‑based sampling package (see the review starting on page 38), and Steinberg/Propellerheads' Rebirth RB338. The initial release of Reality had drivers that were tightly coupled to Soundblaster soundcards, to ensure low latency, but this left a large part of its potential market untapped. To work well with the maximum number of different soundcards, the new version 1.5 adds DirectSound support. It will be interesting to see whether this has affected its latency.
Generator, Reality, and Rebirth should work with soundcards that currently have emulated DirectSound support (such as the Event series), but with increased latency. Gigasampler will only run with soundcards that have Native DirectSound support; one of the cheapest of these is still the AWE64 Gold, along with the rest of the Soundblaster range. Others include the Terratec EWS64L, the Guillemot Maxisound, and some Turtle Beach cards (like the Montego and Daytona). Many consumer cards and most laptop audio chips have support as well, although these tend not to be so suitable for hard disk recording.
If the choice is available, Cubase users should always opt for a hardware‑specific ASIO driver. If not, then for mixdown and automation you may well find the ASIO DirectX drivers give better performance than standard Multimedia ones, but you will still have to change to the latter during audio recording. For other applications, using DirectSound drivers if available will normally reduce latency. The secret of DirectSound drivers seems to be that they are optimised for lots of small snippets of sound to provide low‑latency streaming, whereas Multimedia drivers need large regular buffers of sound.
Bx Conflicts
While moving across the expansion cards from my old PC to the new one, I came across a strange problem that had me completely stumped for a while. I had installed the latest drivers for my AWE64 Gold soundcard with no problems, but then audio playback only occurred in snatches — a second of audio would emerge, followed by several seconds of silence, then another snatch of audio. Towards the end of playing back a WAV file in Wavelab, the playback pointer also started going backwards!
There were no resource conflicts, and to double‑check this I even removed all my other expansion cards (after first disabling their drivers). Nothing cured the problem. Finally, after getting a tip‑off about another obscure problem with a Terratec soundcard, I tried changing the IRQ setting from the IRQ9 value it had been automatically allocated by Plug and Play. This cured the problem straight away. Apparently, ISA cards cannot use IRQ9 when using the new 440BX motherboard chipset. Not a lot of people know that!
If you ever need to force an IRQ value in this way, first reserve the desired IRQ using the BIOS, by changing the appropriate IRQ entry in the PNP/PCI Configuration page from 'PCI/ISA PnP' to 'Legacy ISA' (I used IRQ 7). This will ensure that it isn't allocated to any other PnP device. Once back in Windows, you then go into the Resources page for the soundcard in Device Manager, untick 'Use Automatic Settings', and then change the IRQ value to the reserved value.
PC Snippets
Seer Systems' Reality software synth has just reached version 1.5, and the upgrade is free to all existing owners, who can download it from the web site (www.seersystems.com). However, at 14Mb, it's quite the largest download I've experienced, and you will need a password to access it (send your current details and serial number, and Seer will email the password within 24 hours). Anyone buying the new version will find one less item in the box — apparently the dongle protection has been removed after user complaints. Seer are sending me the new boxed version, so I will report in more detail soon.
Native Instruments' Generator has also undergone an update since my review in the September '98 issue, and is now at version 1.5.6. Apart from a clutch of minor tweaks, there is now support for up to 64 MIDI channels, selectable levels of undo/redo, and consumption of system resources is greatly reduced. Also, you can now set Maximum Processor Usage in the Preferences section, which can automatically reduce the number of voices as required for each instrument to avoid CPU overload. Registered users should point their browsers at www.native‑instruments.com, and prepare for a free 2.6Mb download.
Read All About It
I recently received a couple of books from PC Publishing, both written by Ian Waugh, who is a well‑known author and contributor to several music magazines. Making Music with Digital Audio is a guide to audio recording on the PC, which covers a surprising amount of ground without falling into the trap of being so product‑specific that it soon becomes out of date. The wide range of topics covered include the basics of both audio and the PC system, and build up through a thorough grounding in the theory and practice of soundcards, to audio software, plug‑ins, digital audio, mixdown and mastering. This book provides a comprehensive guide for both the beginner and the more experienced PC musician who would like to know even more (ISBN number: 1‑870775‑51‑1, and priced at £14.95).
The second, more recently released book is Music on the Internet (and where to find it). Now you may think that the joy of surfing the Internet is the way that you come across unexpected sites by accident rather than design, but when you are actively searching out information on a particular subject it can seem a bit hit‑and‑miss, to say the least. Following a general introduction to the Web, information on how newsgroups, mailing lists, and search engines operate, and useful sections explaining software downloading and troubleshooting, the bulk of this book comprises a comprehensive guide to 700 sites of interest to musicians. These cover musicians' own sites, manufacturers, software developers, music magazines (including SOS of course!), retailers, distributors, user groups and support sites. I already spend a lot of time on the Web, and although many of the details here were familiar to me, a lot weren't — I suspect I shall spend many more pleasurable hours in the future following up some of the sites mentioned. Since at current BT rates it can cost £1 an hour to be connected online, you could quickly reclaim the cost of this book (ISBN number: 1‑87‑077558‑9, price £15.95). Both of these books are available through the SOS shop (call 01954 789888 for details).