FlexASIO
A flexible universal ASIO driver that uses the PortAudio sound I/O library. Supports WASAPI (shared and exclusive), KS, DirectSound and MME.
Cost / License
- Free
- Open Source
EUPlatforms
- Windows
Features
- Sound drivers
Tags
- audio-plugin
FlexASIO News & Activities
Recent activities
What is FlexASIO?
FlexASIO is a universal ASIO driver, meaning that it is not tied to specific audio hardware. Other examples of universal ASIO drivers include ASIO4ALL, ASIO2KS, ASIO2WASAPI.
Universal ASIO drivers use hardware-agnostic audio interfaces provided by the operating system to produce and consume sound. The typical use case for such a driver is to make ASIO usable with audio hardware that doesn't come with its own ASIO drivers, or where the bundled ASIO drivers don't provide the desired functionality.
While ASIO4ALL and ASIO2KS use a low-level Windows audio API known as Kernel Streaming (also called "DirectKS", "WDM-KS") to operate, and ASIO2WASAPI uses WASAPI (in exclusive mode only), FlexASIO differentiates itself by using an intermediate library called PortAudio that itself supports a large number of operating system sound APIs, which includes Kernel Streaming and WASAPI (in shared and exclusive mode), but also the more mundane APIs MME and DirectSound. Thus FlexASIO can be used to interface with any sound API available on a Windows system.
Among other things, this makes it possible to emulate a typical Windows application that opens an audio device in shared mode. This means other applications can use the same audio devices at the same time, with the Windows audio engine mixing the various audio streams. Other universal ASIO drivers do not offer this functionality as they always open audio devices in exclusive mode.
FlexASIO information
Developed by
Etienne Dechamps Licensing
Open Source and Free product.Written in
Alternatives
3 alternatives listedSupported Languages
- English
AlternativeTo Category
System & HardwareGitHub repository
- 1,788 Stars
- 93 Forks
- 64 Open Issues
- Updated
Comments and Reviews
Works a treat. Much better than default WASAPI and great in combination with the FlexASIO GUI companion.
Perfect for my usage (not musician, just using a DAW with VST3 to mix my différent virtual output and redirect the master to FlexASIO)
I always been having problem with FLstudio ASIO sooner or later, and never been able to resolve my issues. Despite having so few buffer size settings, I was liking it essentially because it is very lightweight in term of CPU footprint. In the other-side, I was always finishing to use ASIO4all when the above append. But never really like it because it take way more CPU.
And FlexASIO come in :
Perhaps the only downsides are :
AMAZING!!!! Also install the FlexASIO_GUI to configure it easily.
I used to use the ASIO driver from FL Studio just for its shared mode feature. But can't set the buffer size lower than 256. So it's not very good for recording.
With FlexASIO you have full freedom.
A little more complicated, since no GUI to configure settings. BUT Amazing to be able to use ASIO apps in shared mode on WASAPI!