Hi all, my first post?
I am a veteran music producer/mix engineer/audiophile and music lover. I have a dedicated critical listening space and have specifically focussed on creating a transparent, accurate to source playback/listening environment. (You can imagine that Mix engineers need to hear accurately to make equalisation, compression and a multitude of edit decisions). My question relates to the potential computer (electrical ) noise and if the use of ASIO drivers for our recording/production DAWS (digital audio workstations) is effectively eliminating or diminishing the effect on the audio? In my case, I use FireWire to connect directly to DAC’s and AD converters, but for many, they would be using thunderbolt connections? I suspect this situation exists in all commercial recording studios and Mastering Houses where the use of a DAW would be essential? I have not seen any reference to the use and effect of ASIO drivers for playback in any hifi/audiophile forum to date , so thought this would be a useful and ultimately helpful conversation to investigate/explore - hence my reaching out if there is any knowledge/experience of this issue lurking in this forum? Kind Regards Jefferson
Welcome to the forums! The electrical noise you refer to from your computer would only be eliminated by an optical cable connection. The driver’s not going to matter for noise. The driver does matter for a number of other reasons—you really can’t have your audio running through your computer’s audio engine because that’ll sample rate convert—but specifically for noise, that’s more a function of hardware.
You’re A/D converters should be ok as they are connecting to your sources which are analog. DACs matter a lot, sonically, and there’s plenty you can do, like use reclockers and isolators between your computer and your DAC.
I assume your DAW is Pro Tools and you’re running PCM?
Welcome!
Hi Paul, and thanks for taking the time. Yes, I work in the PCM domain but my audiophile listening includes DSD. My particular DAW is Cubase Pro. I am very interested in anything that ‘uncolour’s’ the sound and your reference to using isolators from the PC to DAC making a substantial ‘noise improvement’ is certainly of interest to me. Does PSAudio produce such a product and/or do you have any recommendations? In my case, I’m currently using FireWire from PC to ADDA and back? kind regards
P.S. Totally unrelated, I’m curious about the possibility of utilising Octave Records (facility and Engineers) for a new business venture I am contemplating? It’s early days but would ideally need to gather some (atleast ballpark) ideas of likely costs/timings etc, assuming that Octave Records is open to this type of contracting arrangement? Kind Regards
Thanks Elk. Nice to be here.
Welcome Jefferson.
I’ve had no experience with DAWs. My expertise is with Windows-based systems. So please excuse my ignorance but if the DAW is implemented on a Windows platform then, as Paul suggests, it’s best for audio if the driver, ASIO or USB (I think FireWire and Thunderbolt are variations of USB), is capable of being directly controlled by the audio rendering application. Windows, at least, allows you to do this via it’s ‘Sound’ control interface. Even on Windows 11 the legacy Control Panel applet ‘Sound’ is still available. You can easitly run it by pressing the Windows key plus ‘R’, typing ‘mmsys.cpl’ and pressing the ‘Enter’ key. The pop-up window will show you a list of your audio interfaces. Selecting the one for your ASIO driver and clicking the ‘Properties’ button will bring up another window with ‘tabs’. The ‘Advanced’ tab shows a checkbox where you can allow direct control of the driver (bypassing the built-in Windows audio subsystem). Sorry I can’t be more specific for other OS platforms but I’m confident they would have similar interfaces.
My understanding is that the advantage of using ASIO over USB is that the driver can handle native DSD streams as well as PCM. The standard Windows USB driver can only handle PCM. I think ASIO is the standard audio driver for Linux-based systems. At any rate, as Paul suggests, it’s important from an audio perspective to isolate the noise from the computer (whether or not using ASIO) to the DAC input. I have a PS Audio DirectStream DAC Mark 1 on which the I²S input sounds better than the USB input. I use a digital-to-digital converter (DDC) made by Matrix Audio to convert, isolate and re-clock the (ASIO-supplied) USB input connection to an I²S output connection for this purpose. Apparently, on the Mark 2, the USB input is at least as good as the I²S input. Hope that helps. 
Hi Mike and thanks for your welcome and words.
My DAW is a windows based software fyi. Yes, I’ve been using asio for ever (30+ years) and am fully aware of its total non use of the computers audio processor’s. My only concern is the computer output interface (FireWire card) bringing the computer ‘noise’ to my DAC. I use the Mytek Mastering reference DAC and I power it with PSAudio PowerPlant 12 and custom power cables which I also use to get power to the PowerPlant. I use a different power source for the PC but I think Paul’s suggestion of placing a filtering device along the FireWire chain is worth looking into? I noticed today, on a different forum, a person indicated that the four pin FireWire (fw400) does not carry power and I’m wondering if that means no transferring of electrical ‘noise’ from the computer? Thanks again r thoughts and input. Kind Regards
Fair enough. You reminded me that my PC’s BIOS allows you to disable the USB’s Vcc pin on an individual level. This is what I’ve done for my DDC connection. (Of course this means that the DDC needs to provide its own power. 
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All good. Thanks again!
If you’re able to switch to USB/asio, you could try something like a JCat USB card in your computer. My experience (on the playback side) is that with better quality power to the computer and less stress on the CPU, the more pure the sound is. I’m not sure how you’d make that work in a production environment though. Might be worth asking over at AudiophileStyle if you haven’t already – that tends to be the place to go for high-end computer audio, especially for the diy-inclined.
Thanks for the info flowcharts. I have not heard of audiophileStyle at all, so I’ll go check them out. Kind Regards
Hi Paul, another question? I was thinking of possibly using the PSaudio Airlense as a way of ensuring electronically clean audio to my DAC’s? However, I see reference to the Airlense clock which begs the question - would this mean that my reference DAC would be relegated to ‘slave’ mode with the Airlense clock being the ‘master’ clock? Kind regards