RØDE AI-1 Interface. Q regarding drivers

[David Antony Clark]

Hi. 
Anyone using this? I bought it at a low price as a small, portable pre to take on holiday to keep my new laptop company. However, it appears to only work with ASIO4ALL drivers.
I've never been confronted with ASIO4ALL before and from what I can see they are not optimal.

While I can get it to work with Sonar, it appears not to be able to share Sonar nicely with other progs I use (Sound Forge, RX7, etc).  For example, I can't open any of the several progs I have reg-hacked into Sonar so I can flip clips about "internally". I find this very limiting. It's entirely possible I'm naive to the glories of ASIO4All and if this is the case, please put me right.

I've approached Rode  in the hope the will implement normal ASIO drivers. But I think I hope in vain. It's a cheap unit but well designed and built so I'd like to get it up and running.

Thanks, David

 

[scook]

Given ASIO4All is a wrapper for WDM drivers and the DAW can use WDM drivers directly, see if the DAW works better in when set to WDM/KS driver mode or one of the other non-ASIO modes.

[David Antony Clark]

Hi Scook.  No dice, I'm afraid: "Unable to open audio device etc".  Och well, guess I'm stuck with ASIO4ALL for the time being.
Thanks for the suggestion

David

[scook]

It seems strange that no other drive mode works because ASIO4All is not a driver. ASIO4All is a wrapper around native Windows drivers to presents them as an ASIO driver. There should be some indication in the ASIO4All config regarding what Windows drivers it is using.

Sometimes ASIO4All must be uninstalled to keep it from interfering with drivers.

That said, ASIO4All may be the best choice for this device. In this case, a different device such as a regular microphone (IOW that plug-ins into a separate audio interface) may be a better solution.

[David Antony Clark]

Oddly, Rode offer their own ASIO4ALL option on their website. I've tried this but any buffer size greater than 128 samples causes Sonar to stutter. I'm sure the unit works great on Mac - I suspect little testing has been done on Windows. I have a little Focusrite VRM box for playback only that works perfectly with and between all programs. I'm used to the stability of RME at work so all this is new to me.

Thanks for your help.

[scook]

I just looked up the device. I thought it was a USB microphone but see it is an entry level audio interface. Since it does not have a manufacturer written driver, it must use a generic Windows USB audio driver. IOW, this is a class compliant device. The manufacturer offers ASIO4All because

1. some audio software only work with ASIO drivers
2. it may work better with the native Windows driver wrapped in ASIO4All

The interface is no better than an USB microphone in this regard. Devices that lack a manufacturer supplied driver are not suitable for most DAW applications.

Still it should be possible for CbB to communicate with the device without ASIO4All because the DAW can use native Windows drivers. In this case, it may be necessary to remove ASIO4All. I would not expect much either way from this interface.

[David Antony Clark]

Thanks Scook. Pity really, as for what it is it's extremely well designed and built - you could drive a truck over it.