ASIO FLAC just stopped being Gapless!!

[kloper]

Ok, I am absolutely freaking out. Please somebody help!

I have a Creative Audigy ZS PCMCIA sound card (with 24bit support). I've been using out_asio067 to provide ASIO. For the past couple days, I've been listening to my FLAC music perfectly with very smooth transitions between songs -- i.e. COMPLETE GAPLESS. Today, in the middle of the day, and for no reason at all, the music is no longer gapless (even though I have the gapless checkmark placed). The gap is SO annoying.

So in a panic, I uninstalled winamp and deleted all its settings. In addition i removed the sound card from my system and used Creative's special tool to completely uninstall the drivers and settings. After hard booting off and removing the battery from my computer and plugging it back in and reinstalling everything, the GAP IS STILL THERE!! I've even used XP's System Restore and went back days to when I'M SURE it worked, and it still doesn't !!! I'll go out and buy another card if I need to!!

I'm desperate. Any ideas?

Thank you.

[Sawg]

out_aiso is a third-party plugin and not supported. Though Gapless should work fine with Winamp's normal DirectSound.

Gapless Playback
http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=158316

[Dawnrazor]

I don't have an answer as to why it would stop working and re-installing would not fix it.

But, i can tell you that Otochan's ASIO V.70 exe works fine for me in gapless mode.

[kloper]

I have switched to Kernel Streaming, and all's good again. I have no idea what happened...

[Rocker]

fyi
abx tests suggest that directsound actually sounds better than kernel streaming or asio.

the only 2 benefits of asio or ks is ultra low latency and retarding your soundcard so it only outputs from winamp and not any other sources.

[Dawnrazor]

Rocker,

I have heard that before, but just dont buy it. ASIO sounds better to me on my system.

And FWIW, I have heard that 192k mp3s are transparent to the original, and there are abx tests to prove this.

Well, I took an abx test of 192k mp3s and picked the .wav 14 out of 15 times.

And, how do you ABX direct sound and asio. The time to change between outputs would take sooooo long as to invalidate the tests IMHO.

Do you have a link for them?

And, how could directsound sound better when it is not bitperfect when compared to ASIO that is bit perfect???

Your point is well taken though and 99.99999% of people will be better off with directsound.

But those who are using winamp and XP on a dedicated PC for audio only in to a highend system will be better off with an output that bypasses the kmixer and offers bit perfect output.

[Skinjob]

Originally posted by Dawnrazor

But those who are using winamp and XP on a dedicated PC for audio only in to a highend system will be better off with an output that bypasses the kmixer and offers bit perfect output.

I absolutely agree. Especially if you've gone to the trouble to archive all your CDs in a lossless format. Do you really want to play them back through the lossy kmixer?

I tend to use DirectShow for most casual playback because I like the crossfader with large shuffled playlists. However, for any serious listening I always switch to ASIO. And even though I haven't found an easy way to properly ABX (as you said it takes too long to switch), I still find the difference quite obvious and easy to notice. It's very easy to hear the damage kmixer does to the high frequencies in particular. And my stereo is by no means high-end. Just a good quality mid-range system.

If you're playing back MP3s or other lossy formats it probably doesn't matter that much. But with lossless formats and a half-way decent soundcard and stereo, ASIO makes a very noticeable difference in quality.