Metric Halo 2882 operating guide - Manual (Page 74)

Mobile I/O User’s Guide
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Configuring ASIO Hosts
A BOUT ASIO™ T ECHNOLOGY
ASIO (Audio Stream Input/Output) is Steinberg Soft- und Hardware GmbH’s
technology standard for interfacing professional audio applications to pro-
fessional audio interface hardware. Steinberg defined the standard and used
it for all of their audio applications, and took the further step of making the
specification of the standard available for use by other hardware and soft-
ware vendors. In doing so, they established it as the de facto standard for
making high-resolution, multi-channel, low-latency connections between
audio hardware and audio applications on Mac OS 9 and Microsoft Win-
dows.
Virtually every pro audio computer application provides support for com-
municating with audio hardware via ASIO. As such, it was the natural stan-
dard for Metric Halo to support for interfacing with Mobile I/O. Applications
(programs) that communicate with hardware via ASIO drivers are called
ASIO Hosts.
The ASIO standard is quite rich and provides many possible options for vari-
ations in the specification. There are many aspects of the spec that are not
supported by all ASIO hosts (e.g. ASIO direct monitoring).
Metric Halo has done extensive testing with the major ASIO hosts, and some
of the minor ones, and has worked to ensure maximum compatibility with
all hosts. Even if you are using a host that is not specifically discussed here,
you are unlikely to encounter problems. If you do, please file a bug report
with both Metric Halo and the developer of the ASIO host.
ASIO Basics
H OW THE ASIO D RIVER W ORKS
The Mobile I/O driver is broken into two components. The first component is
composed of the “MobileIO Driver” and “MobileIO Enabler” files, which are
installed in the Extensions folder in the System Folder, and are the core of
the Mobile I/O driver (the enabler file allows the Mac to recognize the
Mobile I/O). The MobileIO Driver file is responsible for connecting the com-
puter to the Mobile I/O hardware, managing the driver state, facilitating the