RE: info about setting up ASIO player for Cleo

Posted by Thorsten (M) on June 21, 2010 at 08:35:33

In Reply to: info about setting up ASIO player for Cleo posted by Rasim on June 21, 2010 at 00:22:10:

Hi,

Cleo has two audio interfaces on the PC side.

Standard windows audio (WDM) and audio streaming input output (ASIO).

On Vista and Windows 7 the windows audio system includes WASPI which is a viable alternative to ASIO but is currently not widely supported by playback software.

As far as Cleo is concerned you only install the driver, that is it.

Each software has different settings, the Cleo Manual shows the ASIO setup for the free J-River Music Juke box software.

This is very much a "Computer Software" type player, for use with mouse etc.. It is free to download.

We also recommend Album player which has very similar and simple settings for ASIO.

Album player is very at home with touchscreens and as remote controlled stand alone media device.

One of the best thing for a CD-Player like playback of a music library is to use Album Player and the MCE Remote.

This allows very easy use of the whole system. It is supported by Album Player.

Both programs need no add-ins or the like to work with ASIO.

When I last used Foobar (quite a few years ago) it needed a suitable plug-in to work with other audio systems than windows audio. The same applied also to Winamp the last time I looked and neither software was easy to set up or to use. To be honest I feel that Winamp and Foobar are now depreciated and would not recommend them any longer for use, they are so Y2K.

Compared to a few years ago we now have Computer Music Players with the highest quality quality very easy. The issues of software induced jitter that several prominent audio player softwares where designed at least in part to minimise have been resolved. There is no longer any need to jump through major hoops to optimise the hardware and software.

Using an asynchronous USB or Firewire DAC like the Cleo reduces differences between playback software that operates bitperfect (that is no oversampling, upsampling or other digital signal manipulation) to very small at the very least.

It is worth noting that XXHE and CMP^2 are routinely used with upsampling, different upsampling processes of course sound still different.

Even though things are much easier now I would still recommend using a dedicated PC/Laptop and starting with a completely clean windows installation.

I would recommend strongly against using a wireless Network connection, most Wifi Card Drivers seem very badly written and can cause "stutter" even with async USB DAC's and large buffers for ASIO. Remove as much of the unneccesary software as possible (including Windows Messenger, Office Enablers, Adobe Reader Quick Start and all those tchotskies. You can find a fair few guides how to do this on the net. Then install your Music Player and consider to run the machine without internet access and without antivirus.

An easy tool to check if the PC can play music well is called "DPC Latency Checker". There is no need to chase super low latency, just make sure the machine stays in the "Green". I found several machines that where "red" (cannot stream audio well) turned green once the WIFI connection was disabled. Some supposed Anti-Virus software (which I found is worse at killing your PC than any of the viruses it failed to stop anyway) also caused huge latency.

My own dedicated Music PC was set up to not have any Internet Browser installed at all (so no-one can get on-line) and the windows firewall is set up to paranoid mode, letting only the Media Software talk to the Internet, to get coverart, CDDB to get proper track info for CD's being ripped etc., but no antivirus at all.

I use Devolo power line networking to interconnect all the stationary PC's in my place, including my Media PC.

BTW, these days I use dBPoweramp reference for ripping. Mainly because it decodes HDCD's into a 20Bit FLAC file, which is an excellent reason to get a Cleo, as HDCD's offer one of the largest libraries of High Resolution material that people actually want to listen to and often already have ton's off on their shelfs...

If the machine must do occasional duty as work (or just occasional internet browsing) machine, set it up with a clean copy of Windows XP (if using ASIO) or Windows 7 (if using WASPI) for dual booting. Again, ton's of how-to's can be found on-line. That way you can run the clean copy of windows without all the usual resource hogs like Skype or Windows Messenger and so on. In this case you can drop back in to "productivity" mode within a few minutes.

I hope this helps a little.

Ciao T
Thor

At 20 bits, you are on the verge of dynamic range covering fly-farts-at-20-feet to intolerable pain. Really, what more could we need?

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Follow Ups Full Thread

Topic - info about setting up ASIO player for Cleo - Rasim 00:22:10 06/21/10 (1)

RE: info about setting up ASIO player for Cleo - Thorsten 08:35:33 06/21/10 (0)

Follow Ups

RE: info about setting up ASIO player for Cleo - Thorsten 08:35:33 06/21/10 (0)

FAQ

Post a Message!

Forgot Password?

Moniker (Username):
Password (Optional):
	Remember my Moniker & Password (What's this?) Eat Me
E-Mail (Optional):
Subject:

Message:	(Posts are subject to Content Rules)

Optional Link URL:
Optional Link Title:
Optional Image URL:
Upload Image:
E-mail Replies:	Automagically notify you when someone responds.

To view your new posting or follow-up, click on the RELOAD or REFRESH button on your browser.