And the ASIO drivers remain following the uninstall of FL Studio??

Thanks for that @ArticStorm, I shall give it a whirl!

 

Thanks very much to you, too Mr. Queef, that clears things up! Much appreciated.

 

By the way, for those with Realtek integrated sound chip, Dell is still maintaining Realtek Audio ASIO drivers.
Haven't been able to test them under load. Busy but rewarding times. If someone is interested PM me

You've been PMed

Not out of kindness, but cockiness. I just wanted to beat those old timers VIPs @ArticStorm and @Mynock to it
Well, it also helped I just had it there lying on my drive

 

Last edited: Mar 6, 2026 at 7:59 PM

Cheers, legend!!!!

I'm just relieved I wasn't berated for my ignorance and genuinely appreciate the help.

I owe you a cerveza of choice.

 

...I'll wait for upcoming Microsoft Low-latency Audio Driver:

https://github.com/microsoft/low-latency-audio#readme

 

Yes. In those days there wasn't much creative wise that PC's were really capable of. It was the whole memory constraint thing coupled with shitty software and hardware that was like trying to jam a square peg in a round hole. To be fair though, even the apple machines of the time were not up to the task of being used in a professional audio application since they were still too slow on the go to be viable in that capacity. But at least apples were able to utilize RAM in a much more efficient way than the PC offerings of the time.

PC's weren't really viable until the capability of accessing as much RAM as possible was an innate capability of the OS itself rather that having to rely on 3rd party hardware/software contraptions only being able to access 64K "pages" at a time. DOS was extremely limited in what it could handle and Win95/98 was simply a pretty GUI version of DOS. There wasn't much added functionality top be gained with WIN9x other than the mouse driven GUI. RAM was still limited to 640K and the expanded/extended memory beyond the 640K limit was simply a joke. You could fill as many RAM extension cards as the sysboard could hold and you could still only access it thru a tiny 64k window in upper memory area. There were various add in cards and hardware contraptions that allowed access to the extended memory areas (installed RAM sitting on ISA expansion cards addressed above the 1MB mark) but they ALL relied on swapping 64K memory "pages" in/out of upper memory. When the expanded/extended memory drivers crashed it took whatever you were working on with it.

The whole Direct X thing was a farce of horrific proportions and that ms thing was a bad joke played on anyone who was dumb enough to be trying to use a PC for anything RAM intensive. Once XP rolled around and broke up the whole 640K DOS ram limitation (Win2000 somewhat paved the way) it was possible for the first time to load up a PC with a bunch of RAM (on the system board) and actually be able to use it without having to resort to running shitty EMM drivers while standing on your head staring at it thru a tiny 64K window. Real MIDI ports for PC's helped a lot with the MIDI aspect, and Steinberg coming out with ASIO & virtual studio technology finally made the PC a force to be reckoned with for audio production and other creative things like Desktop Publishing, and Video Production. WinXP had limitations as well but the 640K limit was finally broken opening up a whole new world of possibilities for the PC.

 

Last edited: Mar 7, 2026 at 12:44 AM

Asio4All 2.15 works flawlessly for me on my older laptop. I tried 2.17 beta and it was clicks and pops in Wavelab for me. I tried the 2.17 final and with the Alternative Buffer Synchronization option enable the sonic problem went away but I had to keep my windows volume at 100 at all times to enjoy it and if I tried adjusting during performance, it was a nightmare. 2.15 works flawlessly across the board with all functionality intact even outside of Wavelab. I tried FlexAsio tonight and I couldnt get Wavelab to even touch it. I tried downloading the GUI to see if it would help and still nothing. Uninstalled all of them (BTW - installed them all seperately of each other with a reg clean between each session so there was no conflicts happening...and yes I removed the generic crap from Steinberg as well) and went with 2.15 and everything is back to normal For me and my experience, I think 2.17, FlexAsio and generic Steinberg are all crap!

 

For sh*ts and giggles, I tried the Dell Realtek ASIO driver and it was crap too. Worse than anything Ive ever heard. According to Google, some people have had tremendous success with it on Laptops that werent a Dell, like HP and such. Not me! Im happy with 2.15 and stability. The age old adage of "If it isn't broke, don't fix it" is real!

 

Haven't tried with wavelab/steinberg, but Steinberg Generic, flexasio (in Kernel Streaming mode), asio4all 2.17 and Dell Realtek ASIO work fine here, with Kontakt and reaper.
Like I said haven't pushed them hard yet. I have a Gygabyte "desktop pc" mobo, not even a laptop