Windows users, do you still use ASIO wrappers? Why?

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Lately I’ve encountered same question over and over, about sharing Bitwig’s audio via apps like Zoom, and the problem being that they use ASIO even when there’s no need for it.
It seems like not many people even know, that WASAPI driver works just fine on Windows, if you don’t need to use inputs or extra outputs for your session, and ASIO wrappers just bridge ASIO to WASAPI anyway.
And in case of needing to use inputs or extra outputs, or taking audio from specific apps, there’s native support for JACK, and then there are more specific ASIO wrappers like VB-Audio Voice Meter.

Ableton and many other DAWs are the cause of this nonsense, as not all of them support modern WASAPI driver model for unknown reasons.

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One of the reasons I switched from Ableton to Bitwig (2017) was for WASAPI support.

I wish Bitwig also supported WASAPI In (like Reaper does). But WASAPI Out is at least half-helpful.

One of my 2 computers is Windows arm64 and I understand native ASIO is coming to that platform this summer. That’ll be interesting!

Anyway, good point – WASAPI works well. It doesn’t equal an external ASIO interface, but for situations when you don’t want/need the external interface, it’s the best choice for Windows.

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