ASIO drivers, heeft met synchronisatie te maken zodat je geen vertragingen in je geluid krijgt bij gebruik van geluids effecten (VST) en bij mixing van MIDI kanalen en zo, en je soundcard moet dat dan ook ondersteunen (alleen de hele goede kaarten ondersteunen dat en leveren de drivers bij de kaart) hier een stukje info uit CUBASE SX (die de drivers automatisch instaleert) om een beetje inzicht in die materie te krijgen.
---------------------------------------------------------
Bron handleiding Cubase SX
An ASIO (Audio Stream Input Output) driver is a piece of software that allows a program to communicate with a certain piece of hardware. In this case, the driver allows Cubase SX to use the audio hardware. There are three general types of drivers:
"Special" ASIO drivers.
Audio hardware with multiple inputs and outputs, special synchronization facilities, etc, normally comes with an ASIO driver written especially for the hardware. If your audio hardware comes with a special ASIO driver we strongly recommend that you use this.
The ASIO Multimedia driver.
If an audio hardware model is Windows compatible, it can also be used in Cubase SX. In that case, a driver called "ASIO Multimedia" is used. This driver is included with Cubase SX and does not require any special installation.
DirectX driver
DirectX is a Microsoft "package" for handling various types of Multimedia under Windows. Cubase SX supports DirectX, or to be more precise, DirectSound, which is a part of DirectX used for playing back audio. If your audio card has a DirectX driver, you can use DirectX instead of the Windows Multimedia system to play back audio, although recording is not possible. This driver is also included with Cubase SX and does not require any special installation.
Clock Source
What is available here is dependent on your audio hardware. There could be options like "Internal" which would typically refer to the clock in the installed audio hardware, and "External" or "Digital" which would typically refer to the clock of another digitally connected device. There is also the possibility that no options are available here, because these are instead set in the Control Panel for the audio hardware.
Control Panel
Clicking this opens the Control Panel for the selected ASIO driver. Here you can make various settings relating to your audio hardware. The available settings depend on the installed hardware, so please refer to the documentation that came with the audio hardware for information.
Release ASIO Driver in Background
If this item is ticked, it will allow another application to playback via your audio hardware even though Cubase SX is running.
The application that is currently active (i.e the "top window" on the desktop), will get access to the audio hardware.
Direct Monitoring
If your audio hardware is ASIO 2.0 compatible, it may support ASIO Direct Monitoring. In this mode, the actual monitoring is done in the audio hardware, by sending the input signal back out again. However, monitoring is controlled from Cubase SX. This means that the audio hardware's direct monitoring feature can be turned on or off automatically by Cubase SX, just as when using internal monitoring. This item is greyed-out if not available.
If you want to use the external monitoring via your audio hardware, make sure the corresponding functions are activated in the card's mixer application.
