ASIO4ALL

The basic function of a WDM audio driver, also commonly known as a miniport driver, is to provide an interface for a basic audio adapter card usually found on a system bus.

Since older versions of Windows struggle a bit when it comes to recognizing WDM audio devices, you can overcome this drawback with the help of ASIO4ALL.

In a few words, ASIO4ALL uses sophisticated methods such as Kernel-Streaming to provide ASIO-specific drivers, therefore making your WDM-based audio devices both supported and manageable on older versions of Windows.

The utility undergoes a quick and surprise-free installation process, after which it quietly runs in the background without actually replacing your current audio drivers.

But, before you get started, you should know that in order to take advantage of everything that ASIO4ALL has to offer, you actually need a WDM driver for your audio piece of hardware.

Upon starting an application that initializes any one of the provided ASIO drivers, you should be able to view a small system tray icon. Please note that the icon (button) might be labeled in a wide variety of ways, according to the particular audio software solution used.

This is also the case with the ASIO control panel option, as some audio software solutions might not provide this possibility. Nevertheless, launching ASIO4ALL's control is easily done by clicking the displayed icon.

The utility offers you various configuration modes. You can choose a more simplistic approach or you can switch to Advanced mode and fully tweak the setting for the WDM drivers. In detail, the Basic Configuration Mode offers you a list of all the WDM audio devices and the options to change the ASIO buffer size.

The Advanced Configuration Mode enables you to fiddle with settings like latency compensation, hardware buffer, “Allow Pull Mode (WaveRT)”, Kernel Buffers and resampling.

ASIO4ALL is a useful piece of software for users who are having problems while dealing with their WDM audio devices on Windows. Before you use ASIO4ALL though, it is quite advisable that you take a few minutes and read the provided documentation.