ASIO making Vegas unstable?
 

Just installed an M-Audio soundcard and M-Audio LX4 monitors and while editing in the last few days Vegas has crashed several times. Usually when I'm clicking around on the timeline with the playhead playing in real-time.

The only thing I changed recently was the addition of the M-audio soundcard and changing the settings under "Audio Device" to "M-Audio Delta ASIO".

Why would this cause instability? What am I gaining my choosing this setting under "Audio Device"? If nothing- I'll go ahead and change it back to the default "Microsoft Sound Mapper" for the sake of being stable.

Which M-Audio? Firewire? USB? Hard card?
The ASIO drivers are usually the correct drivers. Sometimes, you might need to use Windows Classic, but rarely so.
Have you got the latest drivers? M-Audio is fairly famous for constantly changing drivers for new cards for the first few months or so.

Spot, I got the M-Audio Audiophile 192, it has a dongle that closely resembles a Hydra monster.

What exactly does specifically chosing the ASIO drivers in Vegas do?

Regarding drivers I had to download the newest ones from M-audio because my computer was having trouble posting every other time. It's sounds odd but if I turn my computer on it won't get past the first posting screen. I go to turn it off THEN back on and it's fine. It happened every time I cold booted my machine...it would freeze during posting, causing me to have to manually turn the machine off then back on and the second time it would load.

After I downloaded and installed the newest drivers for the Audiophile I haven't had the problem (knock on wood).

I get occasional crashes (BSOD) after I installed the audiophile 192 card and the m-audio drivers. I had assumed it was probably more to do with conflicts with windows and my system. I guess it is time to address it to m-audio....

I called M-Audio Tech support...what a waste of time as I could barely understand the person...and he claimed no one has ever reported a problem such as ours....hmmmmm

That's nuts, Mark. Sorry to hear it.
M-Audio has always had super tech support, maybe with the AVID acquisition some things have changed.
Either way...Try using the Windows Classic Drivers for now. They're more stable, even if not as fast. However, for playback, neither you or Glen should notice any difference. You'll notice the difference and benefits of ASIO during recording, not playback.

Sometimes changing the project sample rate (default is 44.1K) will help, I've noticed.

What is the default "Microsoft Sound Mapper" ....that's different from Windows Classic Drivers correct? Is there a benefit from changing it to "Windows Classic Driver" or "Delta ASIO" if your not recording via inputs on the hardware card rather just editing audio playing back from previously captured footage?

Thank you for the support, much appreciated.

I have it set at 48khz by default. I wonder why Vegas defaults to 44khz?...then again that can be it's own thread entirely.

The windows mapper refers to whatever card your system is set to use in control panel.. So if its the same as the card you have selected for classic driver than they are exact same thing..

ASIO drivers should provide lower latency..So if you move volume for a track on the fly you should hear it sooner than a legacy windows driver.. Also if you were processing a signal input on the fly you should be able to hear the sound with less delay.. So for plugins which simulate guitar amps you can strike the strings and you SHOULD hear the sound without noticeable lag..

I imagine ASIO has a lot more safeguards in place to prevent drop outs or other audio problems occuring also, but as you have noted and ive seen myself many times, it can be more problematic than anything else if the drivers are badly written..

Just run with whatever works best and you get most productivity out of..

Thank you all for the insight. I just wanted to ensure that ASIO driver had nothing to do with sound "quality". Apparently it has more to do with playback/recording "performance".