Drivers
A Driver is a program code that functions as an interface application between the operating system (programming source code) and hardware devices (mechanical and electrical systems). Thus, when hardware is installed in a computer the corresponding Driver must be present or installed simultaneously. The operating system deals with source code in files in order to obtain instructions for the management of the entire computer system. The Driver translates the data compiled by the operating system into actual bit-stream electrical pulse instructions to the hardware device so it can operate. Thus, various different programs can access the same device as the Driver program contains the unique instructions for the device. In MS Windows, one can identify Driver files by the .drv file extension.
Never interrupt the installation of a driver from a disk or downloading from a web site. If you feel you have installed the wrong version wait for the installation to complete and then uninstall the driver application.
Audio related Drivers
- Drivers for soundcards are necessary for the following audio-related operating system protocols: Windows 95/98/2000/NT/XP
- WDM
- ASIO and ASIO 2
- DirectX
- EASI
- Multicard 95/98/NT
- Mac Sound Manager
- Mac ASIO Delta DiO
Audio related Drivers include Sound Manager (Apple Computers), ASIO (Steinberg), DAE (Digidesign Audio Engine), Direct I/O (Digidesign), MAS 2.0 (MOTU), VST (Steinberg), and DirectX / Direct Sound (Microsoft). (Please see Software Page 3 for Rewire and DirectConnect inter-application communication protocols).
If you are using a software Sequencer and a software Synthesizer at the same time on your computer, and the installation of the software Synthesizer does not include and internal MIDI link, then you must install a MIDI Loopback Driver.
On Windows 98 and 2000 OS, some audio related Drivers come under a common class of Driver known as Windows Driver Model (WDM). For instance, several devices connected to your computer by USB cable all have some USB-related communication standards in common. Thus a Driver developer can write the common operations for WDM and the new code would be just for specific functions of the device. This results in smaller Driver files. In addition, WDM results in very low latency performance for sound cards that are supported by the protocol. Direct X virtual Instruments (DXi) plug-ins are designed to take advantage of WDM
ASIO (Audio System/Stream Input/Output) Driver is a protocol that is designed to interface between soundcards, audio hardware and Steinberg’s proprietary Cubase VST software applications (and plug-ins) by superceding the installed audio-related drivers already on the computer. Both Mac OS and MS Windows support ASIO Drivers. The standard has been revised by ASIO 2.0, which will allow two software applications to access a soundcard simultaneously.
Digidesign Audio Engine (DAE) is the proprietary driver set that installs with the Digi 001 / Pro Tools (TDM and LE) hardware and software application. DAE is a separate application that is also compatible also with MOTU and Emagic multi-track audio applications and it supports TDM and RTAS plug-in applications. Digidesign has an additional driver known as Direct I/O, which is a multi-channel audio I/O driver.
MOTU Audio System (MAS) is the driver set that supports plug-in applications that are written for MOTU (Mark of the Unicorn) Digital Performer host application.
EASI (Enhanced Audio Streaming Interface) is the driver set that installs with Emagic’s Logic Audio and allows direct, multi-channel transfer between the application, plug-ins and audio hardware.
Core Audio is the internal audio-related driver set for Apple Computers and the Mac OS X. The driver supports multi-channel audio processing and has very low latency. The driver set installed in earlier Apple Mac computers is known as Sound Manager.
GSIF is the audio-related driver that is part of the Tascam Gigastudio sampler application.