66. Why do I get distorted audio playback or audio dropouts when I use ASIO drivers?

The two most frequent causes of this problem are (1) you have outdated, buggy, or incorrect sound card drivers installed on your computer, and/or (2) the latency is set too low in the sound card's ASIO control panel.

The first thing you should do is go to your sound card manufacturer's website and download the latest drivers available for your sound card. For some sound cards, you may have the option of downloading more than one different type of driver. If you are not sure which is the best to download, you may want to contact the sound card manufacturer.

Next, go into Options | Preferences | Audio and click on the [ASIO Driver's Control Panel] button. This should launch your sound card's control panel where you should see a latency setting. The setting may be referred to as "buffer size". Note: some cards require that ASIO not be in use when you change the latency setting. In these cases, you will need to either close RealBand, or select the MME driver type temporarily, then open the sound card's control panel from outside of RealBand. You may have an icon in your task bar to launch the control panel, or you may be able to access it from the Windows Control Panel. In any case, increase the latency setting until you don't experience any playback or recording problems.

How low you will be able to set the latency depends on how powerful your computer is, the quality of the sound card drivers, and what steps you have taken to optimize digital audio performance on your computer. There is a list of a number of things you can do to improve audio performance on your computer in FAQ topic 87.

Two other settings in the ASIO Audio Driver dialog may help improve performance with specific sound cards if you are having trouble - the 'ASIO Always On' setting (try toggling this off), and the 'Resampler quality' (try setting this to BEST).


Alyssa - PG Music