ASIO: Do You Need to Use it on Your Computer?

What is ASIO?

ASIO stands for Audio Stream Input / Output. It is an audio interfacing protocol that is used mainly to improve latency. If you're not sure what audio latency is, then it is just a measure of the time taken for information in a system to travel from an input to an output. In digital music this delay is measured in milliseconds (ms) and can be caused by various factors including:

• Converting analog audio to digital (and vice versa).
• Real-time EQ effects.
• Sound enhancements (via the operating system)
• buffering.

The ASIO protocol was first developed by Steinberg (a music software / hardware company), to solve the problem of audio lag. Driver software was created to give audio software a more direct way of accessing a computer's sound card and the capabilities of it.
But, should you use it for digital music in your situation?

If You Are Going to Create Digital Music

Whether you use a digital audio workstation, DJ software, or other type of tool to create digital music, ASIO is a very important part of the recording process. Audio recording software needs to have the fastest path to your hardware for multi-channel recording. This will reduce potential problems such as stuttering and lag under high CPU loads. Using the correct ASIO driver for your audio setup also allows software transparent access to all the I/O ports on a sound card. ASIO is therefore typically the best option and arguably better than the WDM audio drivers in Windows.

Professional equipment usually comes with ASIO drivers and it's best to use those. But, there's also a universal driver called ASIO4All which can be downloaded for free. You can find the latest version via the official ASIO4All website.
As a side note, you don't need an ASIO driver if using a Mac computer. The operating system (OS X 10.3 or higher) comes with CoreAudio which is designed for low latency audio recording.

If You Just Want to Listen to Your Digital Music Library

With ASIO being an excellent solution for minimizing audio lag you might think that it's also best to use it for getting the maximum audio quality from your digital music library. After all, several software media players (like Foobar2000, MusicBee, Aimp, etc.) support it. However, ASIO is really only useful for improving latency.
The only thing that you might find when switching to ASIO is it will bypass any sound enhancements you've already set up -- thus cutting through effects that may 'cloud' your listening experience. Examples of this could be real-time equalizer settings in your software media player, or global sound enhancements controlled by sound card software on your system.
So, overall it is normally far better to use the audio drivers already installed on your computer if you just want to listen rather than create.

Source: http://mp3.about.com/od/Software/fl/ASIO-Do-You-Need-to-Use-it-on-Your-Computer.htm?utm_source=exp_nl&utm_medium=email&utm_term=list_mp3&utm_campaign=list_mp3&utm_content=20150731