Tutorials and Topics - Peabody Computer Music

Audio I/OAudio input andoutput with MSPdriver is not available, and the system is emulating DirectSound while using the MMEdriver. In these cases, it is best to use MME directly, or find an ASIO driver for yoursystem.The best performance and lowest latency will typically be achieved using ASIO drivers.The ASIO standard, developed by Steinberg and supported by many media-orientedsound cards, is optimized for very low latency and high performance. As with theDirectSound driver, you need to verify that performance is actually better than otheroptions; occasionally, an ASIO driver will be a simple “wrapper” around the MME orDirectSound driver, and will perform more poorly than expected.Using MME and DirectSound Drivers on with MSP on WindowsOn Windows, MSP loads the MME driver by default. The MSP MME and DirectSounddrivers are located in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Cycling ‘74\ad\.If you have correctly installed external hardware, it should support playback andrecording with the MME driver and the Direct Sound driver in the Driver Menu of theDSP Status Window.If an audio device only supports MME or DirectSound, the Windows OS does anautomatic mapping of one to the other. Since many audio devices initially did notsupport DirectSound, Microsoft emulated DirectSound with a layer that bridged fromDirectSound to MME. Currently, there is greater support for native DirectSound drivers,and sometimes when you use MME drivers Windows is actually running a layer toconvert from MME to DirectSound.Note: Some devices such as the Digidesign mBox only support the ASIO driver standard.In such cases, you will need to select the proper ASIO driver in the DSP Status Window.See the section “Using ASIO Drivers on Windows” for more information.49