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

 

"upcoming" and "Microsoft" in the same sentence =

 

Oh, I'm on the hunt for those for ages! I remembered that there were Realtek Asio drivers out there, but I never found them no matter how hard I googled. You don't happen to have a download link? Or what series from dell to choose from for download?

 

"Microsoft" "low-latency" audio driver eh? Probably thru the mickeysoft store no doubt... It amazes how many hoops folks will try and jump thru to use lame chipset audio interfaces (or worse) in order to avoid buying proper audio hardware with proper drivers. At the same time they demand the utmost audio quality. These two things are contrary to one another - "chipset audio interfaces" & "utmost audio quality". Those who are serious about doing quality audio production get proper hardware/software. Just that simple. Pretty much a universal concept - to do a proper job one needs proper tools. As far as I know there is still no substitute for this simple concept.

I now await the scathing replies defending chipset audio devices and their dodgy audio drivers delivering quality audio production...

 

Last edited: Mar 7, 2026 at 9:22 PM

Realtek High Definition Audio Driver | Driver Details | Dell US

This package contains the Realtek High Definition audio driver. Audio driver is the software that helps your operating system to communicate with audio devices.

 

Take care - Those drivers are DELL model dependent and are not necessarily universal even for some same models of dell machines. If you have a dell machine punch in the service tag and make certain your machine even has a realtek chipset. If you don't have DELL hardware I would tread softly attempting to use DELL drivers with a non-dell system. You'd be better off simply going to the Realtek site and grabbing the generic OS dependent drivers for the chips.

 

Last edited: Mar 7, 2026 at 9:40 PM

These drivers are from “2014,” and I do not recommend using these REALTEK drivers. I can recommend which drivers I use to achieve the best performance. I use the “AAF Optimus Modded Driver.” I also use the “NVCleanstall” tool to install only the really important graphics components, which has improved latency considerably for me. This allows you to install only the graphics drivers and the old control panel, and all other NVIDIA containers that run in the background to collect data, telemetry, etc. are not installed, which significantly improves latency.

NVCleanstall
AAF Optimus Modded Driver

 

They will name it "Microslop ASIO 365".

 

It worked for me, I had a Creative Soundblaster 16 kit, I used Passport Trax as sequencer, and it even worked MIDI SDS (sample dump standard) with Sound Forge 3 and Roland sampler and SY99.

 

Check your PM

the one I have is late 2024

They did it to the fucking Notepad, introducing a bug along the way. I wouldn't put that shit beyond Microsoft, Sorry, Microslop