What are ASIO Drivers?

The acronym ASIO stands for Audio Stream Input/Output. The ASIO is a sound card driver standard that is used for digital audio which is aimed towards the music professional instead of the home PC user. ASIO standards are used by musicians and sound engineers for processing audio files with PC software instead of using an external drive.

ASIO offers a high appeal to the professional music market because of the properties integrated, including high fidelity and low latency. ASIO goes right past the many layers of OS software and processing and instead goes straight from the application being run to the sound card. Because the various layers are bypassed, delays are minimized and the latency is reduced. Because there is a direct path that is high speed, there is a higher fidelity sound involved.

ASIO – How It All Began…

ASIO is the pet project of a leading personal computer third party developer named Steinberg. During the mid 1980s, ASIO was first started with a passionate interest in music and a Commodore 64 machine. As technology relating to computers evolved, Steinberg was a moving force to bringing PCs and music together. The Cubase software program allows music production to be brought to the personal computer and rapidly rose to a major competitor to analog tape equipment. In 1995, WaveLab was introduced by Steinberg, and is an essential online editing tool for audio files that is used by numerous professional musicians.

ASIO was released in 1997, and was an open standard combined with Virtual Studio Technology. ASIO is the core of the Virtual Studio technology, and it supports both variable bit depths and sample rates,multi-channel operation,and synchronization. Many hardware manufacturers besides Steinberg have adopted ASIO. This standard offers high fidelity, low latency, easy use, and stable audio capabilities.

Pinnacle Systems acquired Steinberg, then Yamaha acquired Pinnacle systems, but the Steinberg name still lives on, just as the ASIO standard does. There was a product introduced in 2007 called Sequel that allows entry level PC users to use professional level audio technology.

Not All ASIO Drivers are Created Equal

When downloading and installing ASIO drivers, make sure that the driver and the operating system or application is compatible. This is not always the case, such as with the Digidesign ASIO Driver 6.1.1 and the application Pro Tools TDM 6.2 or lower, or if Pro Tools LE version 6.1 or lower is installed on the system. If the Pro Tools LE 6.1 or a lower version is installed on the system, remove it with the Add or Remove Programs Control Panel, then install the latest version to prevent problems with some ASIO drivers.