Solution: The recommended solution is to buy a USB or Firewire PCI card and insert it to a vacant PCI slot in your computer. Finally connect your audio interface on that PCI card. This will enable a dedicated USB or Firewire audio processing for your audio device. Example screenshot below:
USB PCI Card
4.) You are using severely underpowered computer hardware specifications causing audio drop out and latency issues. Although ASIO handles the audio processing in a more dedicated manner than WDM; digital audio would still be stored in your RAM and these instructions would be executed by your CPU. So this implies that if you are using a 256MB RAM and Intel Celeron in a top end audio interface and modern digital audio workstation; then these specifications are not powerful enough to meet the needs of digital audio processing.
Solution: Get the most powerful hardware you can afford. Never cut corners in this aspect, it will only introduce a lot of problems in the long term.
5.) You have a corrupt OS and registry causing a lot of audios processing issues such as lag and intermittent drop out. Over time, the operating system and the registry would be subjected to a lot of changes (such as installation, un-installation, repair, virus attack, etc.); these changes can slow down your computer and corrupt your registry.
This will worsen if your computer is not only used in recording but for many applications like heavy surfing, heavy gaming, office work, etc. Then during audio playback and recording, you will experience a lot of clips, pops, drop outs or even latency despite using the correct hardware and drivers.
Solution: I experience this issue before. The only solution is to re-install the OS (Windows XP). Reinstallation would completely restore the registry changes back to their original settings. Then make sure this computer will be used for music production purposes only.
6.) USB audio interface is not connected to an USB 2.0 port or a Firewire port is not connected to an appropriate Firewire port speed. A mismatch in speed can introduce some issues such as dramatic slowdown in the performance of the audio interface.
Solution: Read the manual of the audio interface to make sure you are using the correct USB or Firewire specifications. If the audio interface requires a USB 2.0 port, then make sure it is connected to an USB 2.0 port. If it recommends a Firewire 800 port, then connect the Firewire audio interface to a Firewire 800 port. Then your audio interface would run at optimal speeds eliminating any possibilities of latency and audio drop out issues.
Content last updated on August 5, 2012