murlockholms wrote:I don't know what WDM is.
On a Windows computer, you have to deal with different audio drivers.
The Windows operating system and most applications do not support ASIO drivers.
Therefore, you need WDM (Windows Driver Model) compatible drivers that can be used by Windows.
At RME, you can create WDM devices in the driver settings for each I/O port for which you require such WDM drivers for Windows.
These are typically the ports where your monitors and headphones are connected.
You should only create WDM drivers for the ports that are really needed for Windows and programs without ASIO support.
In the WDM settings menu there is a separate tab “Speaker”, here you select the I/O port to which you have connected your monitors.
Based on this selection, a speaker icon will be created in the Windows Sound Settings for this port.
By right-clicking on the Speaker icon in the Windows Sound Settings, you can make this device the default sound device, so that the operating system and all applications use this WDM driver for audio output.
It is best if applications support ASIO because the ASIO driver has direct access to your recording interface. This is the most stable and has the lowest latency in access. In addition, you don't have to worry about the sound being altered in some way by the Windows mixer. The audio transfer via the ASIO driver is always lossless. With Windows drivers, this only applies to the WASAPI driver (possibly only in exclusive mode).
By the way, the WDM devices are created dynamically during operation based on the settings in the driver settings.
You should only set the required number of devices, so that a high number of WDM devices does not take too much computing time. With old computers, it came here already times to performance problems, if the CPU was weak and a quantity of such WDM devices had to be created dynamically.
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