[Music] ASIO Output Support

[Isosceles]

Please can you add support for an ASIO audio output device?

As a owner of a separate headphone DAC + Amp, I get much better quality music when I'm using the bit-perfect ASIO output rather than DirectSound, which changes the audio bitstream before it reaches the DAC. ASIO output would be a great compliment to the Spotify high-quality streaming.

About ASIO4All : http://www.head-fi.org/t/221237/asio4all-explanation

Thanks!

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My Audio equipment : Schiit Bifrost + Asgard, Beyerdynamic DT 250 headphones

[LK63]

Is there any news about the Windows desktop application and the option to choose output, so bit perfect can be possible?

[chissi82]

We need ASIO or WASAPI support. 

[KristoPL]

As you can see from the Spotify team reply, they don't plan to implement this anytime soon.

[Framgeld]

Wow Spotify, it took you FOUR YEARS to reply to this comment, and then just to tell that person that you have no plans to support it? That is a really really poor effort... 😞

[theveterans]

Lolz to people using bit-perfect streaming on a lossy file. Spotify needs to have lossless first before the WASAPI implementation. Tidal is smart where they introduced lossless then added WASAPI output later on.

[lorenamelang]

@ theveterans,

Each additional resampling step degrades the sound far more than the previous one. For me, one step (the original lossy file) is sad but tolerable. Adding a second resampling (by Windows KMixer, or Flash SoundManager 2) turns barely tolerable into a disaster. It would be far easier for Spotify to add an ASIO or WASAPI Exclusive option than to upgrade all of their tracks to "lossless". And probably more effective, since many of the tracks were not created on bit-perfect equipment, and all of them are already sampled for presentation. 

[JusHappyMusic]

@ theveterans

 whenever a msg starts already with "lulz" to underline an argumentative superiority in mmo roxor slang one knows it has to be good, eh.. "topkek m9". get a bit background on this and do some background testing for yourself

some serious testing others did:

http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~hockman/documents/Pras_presentation2009.pdf

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/05/hifi-music-streaming-services-people-cant-tell-it-when-they-hear-it....

some serious ABX test you can do yourself (nothing else matters):

http://abx.digitalfeed.net/list.html

i have both by the way, spotify pro and tidal and hear also vinyl a lot. to determine what medium i use for serious listening  i´d check the dynamic´s database as modern remastering often cuts dynamics.

[theveterans]

Each additional resampling step degrades the sound far more than the previous one. For me, one step (the original lossy file) is sad but tolerable. Adding a second resampling (by Windows KMixer, or Flash SoundManager 2) turns barely tolerable into a disaster. It would be far easier for Spotify to add an ASIO or WASAPI Exclusive option than to upgrade all of their tracks to "lossless". And probably more effective, since many of the tracks were not created on bit-perfect equipment, and all of them are already sampled for presentation. 

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How does lossy benefit from ASIO and WASAPI if the audio spectrum from from the lossy file itself is already mutilated? Lossy =/ bitperfect. I don't think Windows Mixer will degrade it even more since the file is not an original audio spectrum anyway.

Deezer HiFi OTOH provides lossless, yet doesn't provide ASIO or WASAPI where it matters since the file is lossless and any stream that goes into a mixer breaks bitperfect streaming (every bits of ORIGINAL audio spectrum aka not lossy is streamed perfectly)

[lorenamelang]

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"How does lossy benefit from ASIO and WASAPI if the audio spectrum from from the lossy file itself is already mutilated?"

There is more to music than frequency. Consider the time domain. Sampling means averaging the sound pressure over the base sampling interval. All digital music, even "bit perfect", is sampled. Instead of a smooth analog curve, you get a series of steps. You can raise the sample rate and make the steps narrower, but they are still there. Your physical speakers or phones will sort-of round them off when you listen.

Now consider digitally _re_-sampling those steps, probably at a different base interval, like Windows KMixer or most browser-based apps do. Instead of a consistent progression of steps, you are likely to get a jagged mess, with artifacts your physical playback device can't hide. Even if you're lucky and avoid inserting audible artifacts, you've now further masked the exact timing of audible events. Realistic stereo imaging is exquisitely dependent upon precise timing of the audio channels. ASIO and WASAPI Exclusive allow you to avoid one re-sampling step, which is _always_ a good thing.

BTW...  I've found that most "audiophiles" do not notice any advantage to my audio system. Which makes sense to me because while I was developing it, I found that my testing was one-directional. If I tested an improvement in clarity first thing in the morning, before I had heard any other artificially reproduced sound, it was very obvious when I switched to a less clear signal path. But having heard the less trustworthy sound space, my brain stopped evaluating the now degraded factor, and refused to trust it even if it was fully restored. It took me a long struggle to accept that traditional A/B testing could not be used at the level I was studying.

[theveterans]

Not all digital converters resample or oversample or upsample though. That's why some audio companies don't believe in the notion that interpolating the timing/sample rate = better imaging/better sound etc.etc.

AFAIK Windows Mixer resampling doesn't happen if there is no other stream in the mix and if the bit rate and sample rate matches. However, due to the mixer, the buffer length is a lot more than ASIO or WASAPI thus introducing latencies that can result to "potential jitter increase"

Then again, I do see a benefit in WASAPI and ASIO when recording where the lowest latency between the ADC and DAW software is minimized.