I love ASIO output from Mediaportal and I'm really appreciative of the work hwahrmann has done, but it just doesn't work as well as WinAMP. I'll would help bug fix but I'm so busy outside of HTPC world that I'm always here on borrowed time
I had a stable ASIO early on, but then some changes have left me with:
- 5.1 even if I don't want it (i don't)
- A click/pop once a minute or so
- Strange behaviour around track starts/endings
Another reason I switched is to play DTS-cds using the dts/ac3 plugin for winamp using my new M-Audio Revolution 5.1 sound card.
Adding to what rtv said above - I cannot agree enough about getting a decent soundcard. This card does D to A better than any previous card I've owned, and can output better 6 channel surround than the very expensive amplifier it used to run via optical.
I am now totally analogue out from the card, and I can't praise it enough.
BASS with ASIO is unstable on my machine. If I try and change an audio track MP bombs out. Plus it stutters when moving around the menus when playing music, so BASS seems to be taking much more CPU load than foobar. With foobar running and watching a pictures slide show all the transitions are smooth (The zooming and scolling ones), but with BASS they stutter. So for me foobar is what I have to use (Winamp and ASIO is unstable too). It's just a shame I can't get it to work gaplessly as the way MP sends tracks to foobar is one at a time instead of queuing up an album, which would then allow foobar to play it gaplessly. But I digress (I have another thread for this, which no one has answered yet.)