Foobar2000 WASAP2 & ASIO2 output Reviews

Hello Didier, Thanks for this high-end WASAP2 & ASIO2 plugin for Foobar2000 :-) I just recently installed your plugin, because I discovered that MPC-HC had better sound quality with the Multichannel Directshow Asio Renderer than Foobar2000 with the official Asio component. Google search: multichannel directshow asio renderer (version 2.0 is free). Now with your plugin, Foobar2000 sound quality is on par with or maybe even a little bit better than MPC-HC. Sound quality is better all over the frequency spectrum compared to the official Asio component, but I especially notice an improvement of sound stage, image, low end and high end clarity and details. The stereo perspective is "big" with voices and instuments placed in 3D across stereo perspective. First, I installed the official Asio2 1.1 beta2 plugin, but was having issues with playback (Foobar2000 crashes, no automatic shift in sample rate, sample rate locked, etc.). Then I installed the Asio2 1.1 beta2 (patch #1) plugin (Asio only patch) and disabled SIMD instructions and Visualisations, as well as did a manual setup of "end point buffer sizes" in Foobar2000 advanced preferences (according to hardware specs). The Asio2 1.1 beta2 (patch #1) plugin can be found in the 2nd post of Ticket #12 (Didiers answer to Sorin): Google search: foobar2000-wasap2-output tickets 12. I have had a few Foobar2000 crashes, especially with SIMD instructions enabled, even though my processor support SSE41. But now everything is working perfectly with PCM, SACD and DVD-Audio playback. SACD sound quality is on par with a dedicated SACD player. With DVD-Audio I have had a couple of crashes when navigating to another track. But sound quality is top notch, so I can live with that. I use it with RME Fireface 800 and even though this is old hardware from 2005, it is still among the most stable pro audio sound devices. I also use Foobar2000 with the Wasapi2 plugin in an old laptop with spdif optical output to Fireface 800. Sound quality is close to Asio2, not quite as transparent, but better than the official asio/wasapi. Installation note: You get both Wasapi2 and Asio2 in the zip package download, but my experience is that you have to unzip the package, delete the foo_out_asio2.dll and zip the Wasabi2 to a new package to get it installed in Foobar2000. Maybe download should be in 2 zip packages or explained in the installation instructions? With your plugin, Foobar2000 + Fireface 800 is in league with high-end consumer and pro audio playback systems, including higher-end SACD and DVD-Audio players. I think it can be used to feed these systems, but I have no experience with this. Therefore, I strongly recommend that this plugin should be part of the official Foobar2000 components as an alternative to the official Asio plugin, so Foobar2000 users and developers get to know it and can help with feedback and development for future use cases. It would be a shame if this plugin is becoming obsolete for future Foobar2000 releases. Best regards, Rendboell

First off this works .I could not get stability with the offical component.Now i am hoping before i tweak it I could be put right on how to configure/tuning : Renderer::InitAudioClient - endpoint buffer size is not explicitely configured. keep the preferred size returned by the device - preferred endpoint buffer size = 884 Renderer::InitAudioClient - chunk size not aligned on endpoint buffer size - chunk size = 4096 , endpoint buffer size = 884 ASIOGetLatencies (input: 884, output: 1768 As is is this stable and works great ...Many thanks Need to udate has I have the issue now off system sounds messing with playback...grrrrrr though by far not as bad as the default driver or even asio4all.Its beaten me again..... if anyone could help with this( i am going to swop out the sc when my small factor case arrives) as im now back to wasapi default as tthe version from here just crashed on loading.....

Initially I had a lot of trouble to get this plugin to work, however instead of just writing a negative review I thought it would be a good idea to contact the dev, via the ticket section. He was very helpful and provided clear instructions on what I needed to do, to help him diagnose the issue with the plugin. This required patience as there were a number of reasons as to why this was not working on my setup. In the end It now work! and it is a stable as the official ASIO plugin. Was it worth going thru the hassle? Indeed it was, the sound quality is much better. Plus this made me feel part of the development of this plugin. I strongly suggest before writing a negative review, open a ticket and talk with the dev so that he can progress his development on his project.

Thank you so much! This plugin solved an issue with the sound quality that I had using the official WASAPI plugin. This one works much better!

Looked like 'another' plugin to try... made me re-listen big part of my audio collection again! My E-MU 0204 USB is a stubborn piece of gadget. I own it for over 4 years and love it for excellent DAC. But it's never ever been able to play stable ASIO/WASAPI stream other then 96kHz!! All that clicks and crackles then - silence or blue screen of death... No matter what I tried: changing computers, OS versions, usb controllers, various plugins and buffer sizes. No luck. The only option was to ALWAYS re-sample to 96kHz in foobar. This thing WASAP2 made a little(big) revolution here! For the 1st time could natively play resolution of 44, 88, 96, 192kHz. After over 20 hours of continuous random listening I may say my experience is pretty stable except for few crashes due to my settings-tweaking. Still can't make it work in 176,4 and no luck with ASIO2 so far. Over all I am happy 'cause I practically got a new DAC now thanks to Didier!!! Native 192k sounds like magic here. Probably AK4396 DAC feature! ,)

My soundcard won't recognize ASIO, so wasap2 is my only option. The sound quality of the WASAP2 driver is more clear, tighter and punchier than the original foobar WASAPI driver. So I will give kudos to the developer for the excellent sound. However, there is jittering whenever I load a page on the internet; it sounds like a machine gun. I increased the buffer length by a tremendous amount in the output and advanced playback settings as suggested by the developer to another user, but the jittering is still there. The advanced playback settings are quite extensive and intimidating to navigate through. I have a quadcore processor and have no problems with the original WASAPI driver in terms of jitter. Unfortunately, I uninstalled it because of the annoying looping jitter when browsing the internet at the same time. I changed every setting to try and stop it, but I couldn't fix it. It's a shame because the sound quality is quite good. *A side note - Old Mono recordings from the 1960's won't play with this driver. You have to convert mono to stereo with the foobar plugin in the DSP manager.

It's great that there's still development going on. Congrats! So far, I've (well, and friends) tried three different dacs. For now, I will comment only on functionality of the ASIO component, not WASAP2 nor sound quality. We used foobar 1.3.10 on a Core2Quad PC. During testing, the task manager (performance tab) was used to monitor any and all performance issues. There were none. This review focuses on DSD functionality, not so much on PCM. Testing was done on Windows 10, and a little on Windows 8. The good: Pioneer N-50A - ESS-based DAC (24-192; DSD128) , streamer, C-media USB implementation: ASIO2 works flawlessly, including DSD128. The not-so-good: Marantz SA-14S1 - CS4398-based USB Dac (24-192, DSD128). DSD NOT working at all! Tried many variations of latencies, buffers, and all sorts of other settings. NO DICE! As to PCM, got it to work, but not without playing around with buffers & latencies. Nuprime uDSD - ESS-based DAC (32-384, DSD256), XMOS USB. Works up to DSD128; could not get DSD256 to work properly without foobar crashing sooner or later. Still to be tried: iFi nano iDSD (up to DSD512 with DoP firmware but working natively). Note that all these DACs work flawlessly with the original ASIO driver (foo_out_asio), straight out-of-the-box. As it stands, I'm sorry to say the current version of ASIO2 has too many flaws to be usable with DSD. The automatic component & driver endpoints options clearly do not work as they should. Unclear too, for instance, is how these settings interact with the DAC drivers themselves. Anyway, having the option to configure all these settings is nice for the nerds but way beyond the grasp of 'normal' users. There should be automatic out-of-the-box settings that work, period. I do realize, though, that this is anything but trivial. Oh, and ASIO2 does not work with 0.9.x versions of the SACD plugin. So 0.8.4-4 was used. In conclusion: ASIO2 shows great promise but its DSD performance has to be addressed. Cheers, marco

Foobar2000 WASAP2 & ASIO2 output is a genuine and original effort to improve the performance of ASIO Foobar output. Recommended!

Don't want to go back to the regular asio-driver because I am addicted to the improvement in sound quality... From version 1.1 it even works together well with de SACD Decoder plugin so you can also use it with DSD capable dacs to play DSD natively.