• Sound Blaster X-Fi series (excluding Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio)
• Sound Blaster Audigy 4 Pro
• Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Series
• Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Series (excluding Sound Blaster Audigy 2 LS)
• Sound Blaster Audigy Series

EMU sound cards - The EMU line is designed specifically to take advantage of ASIO for multichannel, high quality, and low-latency audio recording and production.

Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum eX*, Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS series, Sound Blaster Audigy 4 Pro, Sound Blaster X-Fi series (excluding Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio).

*To be ASIO 2.0 compliant, software or hardware must support at least one of the above new features. The Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum eX is ASIO 2.0 compliant as the driver set supports Direct Monitoring. ASIO Positioning Protocol is not supported, as this feature is typically only required by professional studios.

There is a special version of Steinberg's Cubasis VST that comes as part of the software bundle in the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum eX. This software will allow you take advantage of these key features of Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum eX ASIO driver.

- One important feature is the capability to route discrete audio tracks in your mix directly to the effects path of the Audigy 2, rather than having to depend upon software-only effects for all tracks e.g. if you wanted only the drum loop and vocal to have the Audigy 2's Jazz Club reverb effect applied. Using the auxiliary busses on the Cubasis software, you could route the outputs of those channels to the Audigy 2 effects path. The ASIO driver is what establishes the path from a channel's output to the effect input. You now have the power to harness the Digital Signal Processor power of the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 for real-time EAX audio effects, while saving CPU power at the same time!

- The Sound Blaster ASIO driver also provides incredibly lowlatency when working with software synthesizers and MIDI keyboards. Typically, the latency between when a note is played and when it's heard is too long, causing an audible delay while monitoring. This is due to the lack of dedicated ASIO drivers for the audio hardware.

- An application like Propellerhead's "Reason" will benefit from a performance boost when used with the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum eX ASIO driver. The application can now speak directly with the hardware, bringing latency time to a new low. This increases the usability of software synths for real-time recording and playback. Similarly, when recording instruments through the line input, Audigy 2's ASIO drivers allow the input source to be monitored while recording to hard disk, with virtually no delay.

In Cubasis there is a choice of four Drivers in Audio System Setup for Sound Blaster Audigy 2 and Audigy 2 Platinum and five drivers in the Audigy 2 Platinum EX.

• ASIO Direct X Full Duplex Driver
• ASIO Multimedia Driver

These drivers let you play back and record at a sample rate of your choice, but only support a single stereo input and output and only at 16 - bit. To use the ASIO DirectX Full Duplex Driver, it is necessary to have Direct X 6.1 or higher installed. Non ASIO applications will use either of these two drivers. You cannot adjust the the Buffer Latency using either of these two drivers.

• Creative ASIO
• SB Audigy ASIO

These drivers are both fixed at 16-bit/48khz. Although these two drivers have different names, they are the same driver. The SB Audigy ASIO 24/96 is only available with the Audigy 2 Platinum EX which uses ASIO 2.0 driver and is fixed on 24-bit/96khz. When using Cubasis you should always have one of these drivers selected and not the Multimedia or the directX drivers. You can adjust the buffer latencies from the ASIO control panel in the Audio System setup from the default 50ms up to 500ms and down to 2ms.

SB Audigy ASIO 24/96 (Only for the Audigy 2 Platinum EX)

ASIO 2.0: ASIO 2.0 is a further development of the ASIO specification. It added two new features: Direct Monitoring and ASIO Positioning Protocol.

Direct Monitoring

When this option in the Audio System Setup dialog is activated the monitored signal does not pass through the ASIO application, such as Cubase. Instead, monitoring is handled by the actual audio hardware by instructing the ASIO driver for the hardware to send the audio from the monitored input directly back to a specified output. This allows virtually zero latency monitoring.

There are a number of options available in the Direct Monitoring options window (as seen above). If "Tape Type" monitoring is selected, Direct Monitoring will be activated for Record Enabled Tracks in Stop and Record modes. If "Record Enable Type" monitoring is selected, Direct Monitoring will be activated whenever a Track is Record Enabled in the Inspector.

ASIO Positioning Protocol (Sample Accurate Positioning)

On many occasions users wish to pull audio digitally from external devices, perhaps even while simultaneously recording into an ASIO application like Cubase and playing back other tracks recorded in Cubase. At these times it is very important to have all these various sources synchronized. Typically an external device's clock and an ASIO applications clock would require synchronizing to allow accurate playback/positioning. The ASIO Positioning Protocol is a technology that ensures that audio in an ASIO application is in sample accurate synchronization with external devices.
This is generically known as "Word Clock Synchronization". However, the ASIO 2.0 Positioning protocol does in fact specify that synchronization occur on two levels:

Level 1: Sample Rate (word clock sync)
If this type of synchronization isn't established, you may run into problems with, for example, clicks and pops or distortion.

Level 2: Sample Position (time code sync)
If the two devices do not agree on time positions, inaccuracies in positioning of the material will occur.