GUITAR LINK UCG102

3.3 Device drivers and latency

A device driver is an interface that ensures communication between the software (audio application) and the hardware (your UCG102). In recent years, the PC platform has witnessed the establishment of several different driver models for sound cards. Some of these drivers cannot be used for simultaneous recording and playback or for working with software plug-ins, since they do not support the full performance provided by professional sound cards and cause a long time delay (this is called “latency”).

With standard Windows applications, you don’t need to worry about which driver is currently being used by the operating system. You only need to select the correct playback device via the Windows operating system’s “Control Panel”.

However, as soon as you start to produce or record computer-based music and work with special audio software such as Cubase, Live, Logic, Tracktion, or others, you should make sure that you selected an ASIO driver. This driver model supports the full range of functions offered by your hardware and gives you the best performance.

With the USB Audio Driver, we have already included one of the fastest ASIO drivers currently available.

You will normally find the selection of a driver model for computer hardware in the standard default settings of the software you are using. If necessary, check the documentation for your software. Use the control panel to set up a lower latency. The smaller the value, the better. If audio dropouts occur, try increasing the latency in stages.

With the OS X operating system, there is only one driver model, the CoreAudio driver. Thus, there’s no need to worry about selecting a driver.

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