The latest update for AudioTheory Guitars is here and this one makes some pretty big 'under the hood' changes. This includes support for the ASIO4ALL audio driver, designed to give lightning fast response times and improve the latency of the application.
AudioTheory Guitars and the ASIO4ALL driver
ASIO4ALL is a freeware audio driver designed for low latency playback. Most DAWs require the use of an ASIO driver, and whilst it is optional for AudioTheory Guitars, it's highly recommended. It's very easy to install and you are guaranteed to get better performance than the built-in Windows driver.
Oh and yes, to confirm this is a Windows specific feature. Mac and Linux come with audio drivers that can handle very low latencies out-of-the-box. More on how the settings have changed on these platforms in a bit.
Changes to the Windows version of AudioTheory Guitars
There are a few things now in place designed to help swap you over to the ASIO driver. If you load up the application without this installed you will see a one-time notification directing you to the ASIO4ALL website.
After this, when the application loads it will automatically use the ASIO driver if available, or revert to the built-in driver if it's not. You can see which driver is currently in use from the settings popup.
If the ASIO driver is in use, you will also see a 'config.' button that lets you open up the ASIO4ALL settings. Here is where you configure your output device as well as the DSP buffer size. If you are not receiving any audio, the likely cause is that the correct output has not been selected here.
Changes to the Mac and Linux versions of AudioTheory Guitars
These still use the DSP latency settings that were previously in place. As above, the built-in drivers are able to support low latency without the need for an external driver. However I have swapped over the selector to a new dropdown which makes it a bit quicker and easier to select the value you're after.
More stuff under the hood
You may notice that in terms of download size, this update is a little larger than usual. This isn't specifically the ASIO driver, but rather a change to how the application stores and accesses audio data.
The files required for audio playback were previously supplied in a compressed format, however this meant they needed to be decompressed at the point they were played. The uncompressed files can be played right away and this, combined with low latency support, greatly improves the usability of the application as a software instrument.
Velocity playback
Oh, and one more change along the same lines. MIDI input playback now registered the note press velocity, meaning the playback volume is controlled by how hard you are pressing the notes. This helps better simulate the effect of a real instrument.
That's all for today. Updates will be arriving very soon for both AudioTheory Piano Keys and AudioTheory Grids, there are a few additional changes I need to make to support these, but I'll be getting them up as soon as possible in the upcoming few days.