Just installed the Windows 8 RTM. At first, I was really angry. Apparently MS wrote an updated, smarter kernel scheduler and my audio was jerky because it kept interrupting the stream because my ASIO driver was for windows 7 and wasn't coded for the new interrupt code.
Then I begrudgingly tried WASAPI. After various tests, I can verify that it's now totally bit-perfect.
If that wasn't awesome enough, there appears to be a completely new DirectSound server! When playing 20-48khz sine wave sweeps at 96kS/s with the output set to 44.1S/s, there is no aliasing!
This sounds really interesting. I have tried the release candidate and working with Metro I felt like a senior trying out a computer for the first time but I have high hopes for it. Regards.
Windows 7 WASAPI Shared is also absolutely bit perfect (if processing is completely disabled and samplerate in Control Panel is set appropriate to audio's samplerate).
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/93067701/ws.png)
(Playback: foobar2000/Primary Sound Driver, Recording: Creative ASIO/MIX FL/FR)
Downsampling (96->44.1) in Windows 7 is also not so bad:
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/93067701/downs.jpg)
And finaly, as I see, new Windows' sound engine has absolutely no differences from it's previous implementation.
Downsampling (96->44.1) in Windows 7 is also not so bad:
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/93067701/downs.jpg)
And finaly, as I see, new Windows' sound engine has absolutely no differences from it's previous implementation.
WASAPI isn't much different under the hood, but the point is more that it's all automatic now and that DirectSound is no longer so low-fidelity.