Audio noise/distortion issues

Questions
5

Yes, when possible I use an external audio interface with SC (I happen to have Focusrite, but I understand other brands are available ;-). I think most of them have reliable ASIO drivers. When working on a laptop, though, I often use the internal sound card, and have good luck with it nowadays (thanks to SC’s much improved support for Windows audio, in version 3.10.something). But I also found using a non-ASIO interface was important when doing live coding streams, since I found OBS Studio couldn’t stream/record the output audio from a device when SC is using the ASIO API – in this case, I would use the internal (or external) sound device in SC via DirectSound or WASAPI.

But again, I would really avoid the MME API, I’ve tended to get glitches and hiccups on it, especially on medium-powered laptops when running on battery. On a laptop without external audio interface connected, I tend to use the DirectSound API (even though it’s not the most “modern”) to access the internal audio hardware (Realtek or whatever) with scsynth; it’s what’s proven most reliable for me on various computers and laptops from different brands, and I “never” have crashes or audio hiccups (knock on wood), and the latency is fine for my purposes. And it also means I can use built-in virtual devices like the Windows “Stereo Mix” to take SC output into other applications as an input.

So, from my own experience, I would suggest, in order of preference:

  1. use an external audio interface with its native ASIO driver
  2. when not available, use the computer’s internal audio hardware via DirectSound or WASAPI (or whatever API works for you, probably either should work equally well)
  3. if you need to do inter-application audio or grab streams with (e.g.) OBS Studio, use whatever audio hardware you like (internal or external) via DirectSound or WASAPI APIs, not ASIO in this case.

I would be happy to hear from other peoples’ experiences and recommendations with SC audio on Windows. Especially would be glad to hear success stories with using SC with ASIO drivers, while also sending audio between applications. I’ve tried “Voicemeeter” and similar things, with some – but not consistent – success. If you don’t mind having a DAW open, I think you can also do virtual ASIO routing with Reaper’s ReaRoute (and probably other solutions).

Thanks,
G.