I am thinking of running audio out the laptop via WASAPI for live gigs.
It has been running fine at home in the studio, however I am dropping the hardware keys and going to a controller/laptop rig.
So the question is, for those who have/are using WASAPI drivers, what has your reliability experience been like?
Thanks
No comment on WSASPI, but do you have ASIO drivers. It’s all I use and to date they have been rock solid…
Thanks Derek, yeah I know all about ASIO, been using it for years haha! I want to look at a different cabling arrangement by using the laptop audio port, hence the question re WASAPI and as I wrote it (WASAPI) has been working fine in the studio, and I am still going to probably start using it live, but I was just asking if anyone ha s had really negative experiences with it live.
The only person I think is using it is (I think) @LeesKeys . I think he’s been using it live for a while. He may be using ASIO4ALL wrapper, but I’m not sure. I would wager that 98% of the folks here would never consider anything but ASIO. That said, I realize WASAPI has gotten much better since recent releases of Windows 10. There may be other people here using ASIO4ALL as a wrapper who aren’t really aware of, and don’t care, what’s under the covers.
And this, you might search the forum for WASAPI, there have been questions about it. Besides live use, some are using it for making videos, etc. where multiple programs need access to the audio driver.
WASAPI does not use ASIO4ALL - it is its own proprietary audio driver. ASIO4All is for the MME drivers in Windows.
I did experiment with it a little, but I’ve been using Asio (Scarlett 2i2) for the past couple of years
thanks - yeah i’ve been using it home for quite a while and (especially after) the latest W10 it seems pretty cool!
TBH, I would advise against the laptop audio port in any serious musical setting - those ports are driven by pretty basic chips, so the audio quality isn’t anything to write home about, let alone the issues around shielding and noise from the adjacent circuitry… Good enough for some basic multimedia presentation, but for anything serious, I’d certainly go for an external audio interface of at least medium quality. I’ve had all kinds of funky experiences with on-board audio, so I can’t really vote for it.
Cheers,
Torsten
TBH Torsten Ive been running it through the PA at home (at about gig levels - I have a LARGE practice area) and there’s no difference (that I can tell anyway) between it and the dedicated audio midi interface! We are talking pub gigs here m8, not audiophile quality!
Hey, just giving friendly advice based on my experience - by all means go out and find out what works for you…
For certain, if you are running at near-gig levels on your PA at home and are not hearing all kinds of computer noises, then you are blessed with a really decent laptop with top-quality audio shielding. You would definitely hear it if it didn’t have that, and since crappy shielding is what we have normally experienced over the years it is great to hear things have improved.
The Realtek audio cards set milestones with audio quality and became the industry standard, so it is not true any longer that the audio chips are crap. The other manufacturers have had to follow suite. That coupled with the huge improvements in latency Microsoft introduced in Windows 10 for WASAPI have really closed the gap.
Terry
haha yeah I know, sorry if my post didn’t seem that way. The advice is appreciated and was noted!
Good if laptops are getting better. I tried that route first many years ago, and it was awful. 
Wasapi these days is far better performant than asio. If only there was a way to combine the 2. Or have more powerful soundcards.
I have a decent mk4 but still some plugins are to demanding, like avenger. I’m pretty sure it’s about the coding also. But i wish there was a solution.