ASIO Driver for Audioquest Dragonfly Red

[twotoedsloth]

Hello,
So I bought an Audioquest Dragonfly Red, and I"m trying to get it working properly in Sound Forge. I need an ASIO driver otherwise I'm compromising sound quality. The only driver that shows up is called "Speaker Left" and "Speaker Right".

Am I missing something? Or is the WDM driver sufficient?

Thanks,

Peter

[Jorge]

I have Sound Forge Audio Studio but I think the fix is the same. You should be able to just go to Options > Preferences > Audio > Default Playback Device > Speakers (AudioQuest Dragonfly) and use the Dragonfly instead of any other output device or interface that you had been using, without installing an additional driver. What is the problem you have when you use the Dragonfly?

[twotoedsloth]

Hello,

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

I am looking for an ASIO driver because I would like the sound to bypass the Microsoft mixer.

My concern is that the sound is being altered before I get to hear it. I'm using the device to edit classical music concerts, and I do need to be able to hear fades and noise reduction accurately. I was using the Sound Devices USBPre 2, but it's form factor is less than ideal, which is why I bought the Dragonfly.

Does ASIO4ALL just pass the audio, or is it also "enhancing" the sound?

Thanks,
Peter

[Hugh Robjohns]

Asio4all doesn't do any enhancement processes, and it should work fine with the dragonfly DAC -- I've seen many references to its use in that context across the web and in reviews.

H

[James Perrett]

The only thing is that ASIO4All still passes audio through the Windows sound system as it is just a wrapper around the standard Windows drivers. However, if you make sure that you use the Dragonfly driver rather than any generic Microsoft device you should find that it is bit transparent - I've had no problems with the standard drivers with many interfaces provided anything fancy is switched off.

[twotoedsloth]

Hello,

Thanks again for responding. I can't find a Dragonfly driver. Do you know where I can download it?

Thanks,

Peter

[Pete Kaine]

Appears to only use Windows native and it doesn't have it's own drivers.

Go into it's properties inside of device manager and you can disable extra Windows processing options and effects.

Failing that if you want ASIO anyway, A4A as you've already suggested.

[twotoedsloth]

Thanks everyone. I think I'm hearing everything, as it sounds very similar to my USBPre 2.

I'm using the Windows Classic Wave driver, but I'll give ASIO4ALL a try later tonight.

Cheers!

[resistorman]

WASAPI drivers are native and work well, is there an option for those?

[forumuser937151]

Hello,
So I bought an Audioquest Dragonfly Red, and I"m trying to get it working properly in Sound Forge. I need an ASIO driver otherwise I'm compromising sound quality. The only driver that shows up is called "Speaker Left" and "Speaker Right".

Peter,

Hi I designed all the DragonFly models for AudioQuest. Maybe I can help to explain anything you have questions on. DragonFly uses standard UAC drivers (USB Audio Class). All operating systems support these natively. Windows now supports UAC2 drivers as well.

WASAPI is the most direct way to interface an application to any audio device on Windows. If you use something like ASIO4ALL then it will probably use WASAPI or Kernel Streaming depending on the OS level you are running. Like someone said ASIO4ALL is a wrapper which allows ASIO function calls to be converted to either of these formats.

You would still be better off using WASAPI over ASIO because it removes a layer of processing that is not really needed.

I am not familiar with Source Forge, if it only supports Direct Mode or ASIO then you are better off using ASIO4ALL and this should work fine for you. If they allow for WASAPI mode then I would suggest running that was as it will sound the best.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask the AudioQuest support staff. They can help you out with these questions as well as other products from AudioQuest.

Thanks
Gordon

[zenguitar]

Thanks for a really helpful post, and welcome to the SOS forums Gordon.

Andy

[Hugh Robjohns]

Thanks for joining the SOS forums, Gordon, and providing such a helpful answer.

H

[twotoedsloth]

Thank you very much for taking the time to try to help me.

I'm honestly not being deliberately dense here, but I don't quite understand. Is WASAPI a separate driver that I need to download and install? Right now I am using the Windows Classic Wave Driver - Speakers (AudioQuest Dragonfly Left/Right

Is this the same thing as WASAPI?

Sorry for the bother.

[Hugh Robjohns]

From the jriver website:

The Windows Audio Session API (WASAPI) is Microsoft's most modern method for talking with audio devices. It is available in Windows Vista, Windows 7, and later versions of Windows. It allows delivering an unmodified bitstream to a sound device, and provides benefits similar to those provided by ASIO drivers. One of the other main benefits of WASAPI is that it provides applications with exclusive access to audio devices, bypassing the system mixer, default settings, and any typically any effects provided by the audio driver. WASAPI is the recommended Audio Output Mode for Windows unless your audio device has a well-behaved ASIO driver, and it effectively replaces all legacy output modes including Kernel Streaming and Direct Sound.

WASAPI support was first added to Media Center 13. Media Center 15 added event style WASAPI support, and MC 18 made this the default.

[resistorman]

Sorry, I shouldn't have called WASAPI a driver. I use it on my laptop when I don't have an interface hooked up, as asio4all has never worked well for me. Reaper supports WASAPI, and is an inexpensive and powerful DAW.

[CS70]

Thank you very much for taking the time to try to help me.

I'm honestly not being deliberately dense here, but I don't quite understand. Is WASAPI a separate driver that I need to download and install? Right now I am using the Windows Classic Wave Driver - Speakers (AudioQuest Dragonfly Left/Right

Is this the same thing as WASAPI?

Sorry for the bother.

No, WASAPI is simply a part of Windows, which gives applications a standard way to access the audio hardware.

Unlike, say, the bit of Windows that allows applications to access the screen, mouse or keyboard, it's got a name, partly because applications have more than one (standard way) available, partly perhaps because it's sexy.

When a real-time audio application decides to use WASAPI in one of its operating modes, called "exclusive mode", it can bypass other software layers in Windows which, while being useful for other types of audio applications, slow down performance; and it can therefore achieve as high performance as possible.

When you use the Classic Driver you are using an older, different standard way to access the audio hardware (called WDM), which does not work as fast.

In order to use WASAPI, you interface driver must support it, and the application must allow for it.

[Jorge]

Can someone please translate for us IT dummies? In Windows 7, do you have to do anything to use WASAPI, or does the Dragonfly Red DAC automatically use it? If you have to do something, what exactly do you need to do?

[resistorman]

Can someone please translate for us IT dummies? In Windows 7, do you have to do anything to use WASAPI, or does the Dragonfly Red DAC automatically use it? If you have to do something, what exactly do you need to do?

I'm really not very experienced or qualified to give you a great reply on this... I tend to do things off the cuff and experiment to get what I need to do and move on. This last year I was doing a lot of traveling and wanted to do some music production work on a low cost ultrabook laptop without dragging along an interface. It's outfitted with the usual conexant audio chipset which has an abhorrent software interface with brutal sound mangling "enhancements". I had become interested when I noticed that my Reaper installation audio device dropdown stopped calling WASAPI "experimental" and used it as my default audio device. I messed around, found settings for latency, sample rate, exclusivity modes and whatnot and found that it gave me acceptable, stable performance through my headphone jack with surprisingly decent sound quality. I have hooked up USB Arturia and Linnstrument controllers with playable soft synth latency. Several of my standalone synths like Kontakt support it natively. I guess it's kind of an overlooked and underexplained option.

[CS70]

Can someone please translate for us IT dummies? In Windows 7, do you have to do anything to use WASAPI, or does the Dragonfly Red DAC automatically use it? If you have to do something, what exactly do you need to do?

There are three parties at work here - Windows (which has always WASAPI), the interface (which can be designed to make use of it) and your application (Sound Forge) that can also allow you (or not) to make use of it.

1) You don't have to do anything in windows 7 as WASAPI is always there.

2) The interface may or may not make use of WASAPI. According to Gordon above, the Dragonfly works with it. That means that the accompanying software should include a WASAPI driver. So you've got to install that, if it's not done automatically by Windows.

3) Then all it's left is your application (Sound Forge Audio). I don't know it, so I have no idea if it can use WASAPI. I found this image which suggests it does (but not sure if it is Sound Forge or some other Magix/Sony program!).



In that case you go to that page in Sound Forge and check "WASAPI driver" in the "Audio Playback" section, selecting the driver which you have installed at step 2) - basically telling Sound Forge to use that.

[Jorge]

Thanks. Do I need to install a driver for Dragonfly Red to use WASAPI?
I can't find the page you posted in the Sound Forge Audio Studio 10, I don't see anything in Preferences that mentions WASAPI. All I see are Microsoft Sound Mapper, Direct Sound Surround Mapper and Windows Classic Wave Driver.

[resistorman]

Thanks. Do I need to install a driver for Dragonfly Red to use WASAPI?
I can't find the page you posted in the Sound Forge Audio Studio 10, I don't see anything in Preferences that mentions WASAPI. All I see are Microsoft Sound Mapper, Direct Sound Surround Mapper and Windows Classic Wave Driver.

That would suggest that your version of Sound Forge does not support it, and you'll need to try asio4all or another program.

[CS70]

Thanks. Do I need to install a driver for Dragonfly Red to use WASAPI?
I can't find the page you posted in the Sound Forge Audio Studio 10, I don't see anything in Preferences that mentions WASAPI. All I see are Microsoft Sound Mapper, Direct Sound Surround Mapper and Windows Classic Wave Driver.

Afraid Jorge is right. You can try install Asio4all and see if an ASIO option appears in your preferences.

[twotoedsloth]

Many thanks for your thoughts.

I guess Sound Forge doesn't utilize WASAPI.

Which do you think is the better way to go: ASIO4ALL or WDM? Low latency performance is not an issue for me, all I will be using is a stereo editor (Sound Forge).

[CS70]

Many thanks for your thoughts.

I guess Sound Forge doesn't utilize WASAPI.

Which do you think is the better way to go: ASIO4ALL or WDM? Low latency performance is not an issue for me, all I will be using is a stereo editor (Sound Forge).

ASIO4All is simply a way to make an application think it's talking to an ASIO driver while in reality is still talking to the WDM driver. So it shouldn't really make much difference.

[forumuser937151]

All,

So sorry for falling behind here... Let me explain a little better how all this works.

So you have the device hardware at the lowest level of the reverse pyramid here. Above that for the DragonFly and other USB devices the root hardware device driver. This is included in all operating system. All USB devices talk the same language.

Above that is a division of speeds usually Low Speed, Full Speed (DragonFly), High Speed and Super Speed. Low/Full are grouped together, High Speed is separate and so is Super Speed. This is because of the way USB has evolved. The data rates and structures are different enough that they require this stage. Again nothing you have to deal with.

Above that is what the device looks like. Is it a Printer, Mouse, KBD, Audio Device, Hard drive. Each USB device tells the host what it looks like and what CLASS it is so the HOST knows how to talk to it.

In Windows the audio is then brought out as WASAPI, so this is the most direct audio format that an application can use other than some custom device driver. There should not be any format change or anything you have to do for the program to access a device this way other than choosing. Kernel Streaming which has been available since Xp or maybe earlier also fits in there somewhere. Though from Win7 and above it is suggested not to use this and instead use WASAPI. You can set in your control panel sound to WASAPI exclusively (default) and at that point no MIXER will be used on that port and your application will have complete control over the device.

ASIO, Direct Sound and other Windows audio interfaces sit above this. ASIO4ALL uses the Kernel Streaming interface to create what we call a wrapper. A wrapper basically takes ASIO calls and converts them into Kernel Streaming calls. I have used ASIO4ALL a number of times when I used Audio Interfaces and Xp because of the KMIXER corrupting the audio.

Really from Win7 to Win10 this is not nearly an issue. All the audio interfaces are now bit true and will sound as they are from your tracks.

That being said, you will hear interface differences because of the effect they have on the operating system. So your best bet is use WASAPI as it has the least effect on the OS.

We have done extensive studies on this and can prove why sound changes between apps, OS types, interfaces even USB ports. I have given talks at many companies like Vintage Kind and so forth on how to optimize your systems.

Just a couple of quick things about USB. It's much easier on macOS to determine this. But you want audio devices to go as direct as possible and not have other devices on the same link. Internally on a lot of computers is devices like track pads, keyboards, Bluetooth etc... that could be on an internal hub. It's best to stay away from these ports. On macOS you can use the System Information application in your utilities folder. On Windows you can use the device manager in the control panels, but this is a little awkward. Try the Thesycon USB descriptor application as it might help you to find the best port for audio.

http://www.thesycon.de/eng/usb_descriptordumper.shtml

If you have other questions or still a little confused about all this I can try some things out for you or ask my gang of musicians and mastering engineers for some answers. I have ProTools 12, Logic and other apps setup on my recording rig with a Prism Lyra and a boat load of 500 modules (I design my own) on a MacBook Pro.

Thanks,
Gordon