ASIO

From SDWiki

ASIO is a replacement driver stack developed by Steinberg and is designed to remedy an architectural flaw in the WDM audio system.

WDM's kernel mixer issues a minimum 50msec latency in addition to whatever latency is caused by the hardware, the software's buffers, and so on. Latency more than 100msec on a Windows system is downright common, but completely unacceptable for professional audio users.

Schism Tracker, as an open source program licensed under the GPL , is currently unable to support ASIO. This is because ASIO is a proprietary, closed source technology protected by a licensing agreement which prevents redistribution of its source code. So although Schism Tracker could be made ASIO-capable (providing the user's sound device is similarly capable), ASIO support cannot be distributed in Schism Tracker without violating either Steinberg's licence agreement (if the code was distributed), or Schism Tracker's GPL License (if the code was withheld).

There are persistent rumours of Steinberg opening up licensing, but without any apparent movement. Anyone who cares about this issue is invited to make their views known to Steinberg at press@steinberg.de.