Any music players with VST3 plugin capability?

[Sebastian_Alvarez]

I know this is not exactly related to Cubase, but at the same time, it is something that if it exists, there’s a good chance Cubase users might know.

I had a thought that would make some developer a decent amount of money (and I mean decent literally, I don’t think anybody would get rich, but they would still make a decent amount of money).

In both Mac and PC there are some decent music players, some that suck and none of them seems to be excellent, but at least there are some that allow you to load all the FLACs you buy on HD Tracks, Qobuz, etc, and your own CD rips into a library that can play them and are not the hellish experience that is Apple Music with its one-for-all disaster that used to be called iTunes and now simply “Music”. On macOS, because on Windows it’s still called “iTunes”, which is also the name of the Apple service where you can still buy music and I’m gonna stop before I blow a fuse.

But let’s say you have something like Flacbox or Pine Player on Mac, or Music Bee on Windows. Player that allow you to keep your purchased library of FLACs without messing it up, displaying album covers and whatnot. Usually come with an EQ, although the phone ones come with more stuff.

But what if you could load any VST3 FX plugin you have installed in your system, like you can with Cubase, Nuendo, Wavelab, and any other DAW. I’m only referring to audio FX plugins, not virtual instruments of course.

I didn’t find anything like that in my search, at best there is something called Gig Performer for musicians, but that’s obviously a different type of program.

But imagine if you could load Frequency2 or FabFilter Q3 to any album you’re listening to, especially those that don’t sound that well. Sure, you can drag and drop all the files in an album in Cubase, save it as a project, and so on, but it’s not exactly the fastest thing if you want to do that to several albums.

I’m just talking about a simple music player that allows you to use any VST3 FX plugins you have in your system. I think it would be a fantastic idea, but let’s do a little poll and see, since today is election day, let’s have on of our own:

• It’s the best idea in the history of the world!!!
• It’s a decent idea, I like it. I’d pay ten or twenty bucks for a player like that, if the player itself doesn’t suck
• I don’t think it’s that worth it. If it’s free I’d give it a try.
• No. No. Just, no.

[ASM]

I think there’s no need for an audio player plugin in a DAW (e.g. Cubase). First, you can import any number of audio files and apply FX on them. Second, if an external audio player is available on the computer (and this is almost always the case), with a decent audio interface you can simply route its output via an input into the DAW and add any effects, listen to it and record it.
Apart from that, I voted “I don’t think it’s that worth it. If it’s free I’d give it a try” anyway.

[LotharR]

Hi,

for foobar2000 ist a VST Plugin available, claiming VST2 and VST3 support.

There is also a VST Plugin for Winamp.

[Sebastian_Alvarez]

@ASM

I think there’s no need for an audio player plugin in a DAW (e.g. Cubase).

Sorry, you misunderstood. I didn’t say anything about adding a player to Cubase. I meant a standalone player like the ones I mentioned, Flacbox, Pine Player, Music Bee.

[ASM]

OK, I understand. Still no need.

[Grim]

You can host a plug on your sytem audio so it works with any player you want to use, plus browser audio etc. I do this with Blue Cat Patchwork but there are quite a few options including free ones though they are quite clunky.
IMO this makes much more sense than putting in a single player…but as said Foobar does it if that’s all you want.

[Brian_Roland]

I’m on Windows 11…

I’ve been piping everything audio and MIDI through a standalone bidule (PC and Mac versions exist) instance for years. It serves as a kind of patch bay, and I can insert whatever chain of audio and MIDI plugins I like. On windows it supports VST2/VST3/CLAP (Maybe the pro-tools one too?). On Mac it does all those plus AU.

Personally, I also use ASIO Link Pro (Windows only…Do Macs use ASIO at all?), and keep most things in the ASIO realm, but bidule will work with the other device types too (MME/WDM/WASPI).

[Johnny_Moneto]

I moved the topic to the Lounge as it has no direct connection to Cubase.

[GlennO]

@Sebastian_Alvarez

I didn’t find anything like that in my search,

Soundsource lets you apply plugins to any audio app.

[pittr]

Greetings!

Saw your post above and thought I would give your method a whirl. I just installed the trial version of Bidule, and I also installed ASIO Link Pro. I do not have an audio interface, so I`m stuck with my Win11 laptop internal soundcard. I also just bought Toneboosters Morphit (to be my systemwide headphone correction + crossfeed plugin).

Though I am new to Bidule and ASIO Link Pro, I want to give this a try (seems better than all the other methods I have read here). Is the Bidule patch bay you`re using simple, or is this gonna be a long, convoluted process to set up? Cheers!

[Brian_Roland]

It can be as simple or as complex as you like.

We’ll get into bidule a bit later…for maximum ‘inter-app’ routing flexiblity, I recommend getting ASIO Link Pro up and running first. This way you can mix and match ASIO apps with WDM apps and route AUDIO streams among them all.

Bidule can host plugins, and manipulate anything MIDI and Audio in real time. Rather than ‘scripting or programing’, you can use object oriented ‘bidules’ to manipulate/mix/stage data streams to your needs/likes. It can also trigger audio files, MIDI files/loops, can record, and a whole lot more. You can even build synths and effects of your own, as it includes a variety of arp engines, oscillators, comb filters, envelope bidules, lfo bidules, etc. You even get some bizarre Stochastic/random event generators (they can be set up to trigger notes, send CC events, manipulate VST parameters and more). Yep, you can bind keystrokes to MIDI events, or MIDI events to keystrokes too.

If you don’t have a true ASIO audio interface, you can use the Steinberg Built in ASIO driver, or grab ASIO4ALL to get an instance of ASIO Link Pro working.

I recommend giving ASIO4ALL a try first, as it’s a good bit more ‘tweakable’. Possible to aggregate devices, etc. I.E. If you get clicks and pops, you can tweak buffer sizes and such until it jives with whatever hardware you’re using.

Unfold me and scroll back to the top for loads of Step by Step Goodies and Screen Shots

1. Install ASIO4ALL. This utility creates an ASIO backend for any standard Windows WDM driver.

Be careful what you end up clicking on that website to download, as it will spam you with a ton of confusing ads, and if you accidentally click one of them by mistake it’ll attempt to install all sorts of apps and services you probably don’t want or need.

here is a direct link to download it straight away.
https://asio4all.org/downloads/ASIO4ALL_2_16.exe

Or if you want to navigate that web site…
Scroll until you find this link and click it to end up with the latest version of ASIO4ALL.

I recommend toggling the offline setup option ON during installation.

You might not need it, but it’s good to have just in case. the ASIO4ALL Off-line Settings app can come in handy if you have several interfaces plugged in and something is conflicting or otherwise hanging up ASIO4ALL.

I.E. I have a ton of audio devices hooked up to my PC right now. ASIO4ALL kept hanging up when I tried to link it up between my motherboard’s built in Realtek Audio interface and ASIO Link Pro at first. So, I clicked the Windows Start Icon, typed in Off-line Settings, and launched this App.

From here I was able to click the Advanced Settings Cog in the lower right corner of the ASIO4ALL control panel;

Then sort out the exact interface(s) and inputs/outputs I want ASIO4ALL to use.

Note, it is possible to have ASIO4ALL ‘aggregate’ multiple audio devices via their WDM drivers into a single ASIO driver. I don’t recommend aggregating devices in the beginning. Later you might experiment with aggregating stuff. If you do, keep this in mind.

Unless the devices have special options to share clock signals (word clock, SPDIF connection, or special bridge cables or PCI lanes on some advanced audio cards), each interface will have its own clock! This means the two signals could end up with ‘clock drift’ and get out of sync with each other.

Does clock drift matter? When aggregating inputs, it might not be a big deal depending on what you’re trying to record. I.E. Only have a USB Mic or headset handy and want to get it into the matrix? It should be fine for simple projects.

When aggregating outputs, it can be a pretty big deal if all of the outputs need to be rock solid in time together. If that’s not so important…I.E. Just want to send something as an IFB (Interruptible Fold Back) over a USB headset, or to check something briefly on a different set of monitors/headphones/whatever, but won’t be trying to track/mix/etc while listening to this cue…it should be fine. Just be aware that if timing is critical in any way, keep all of those time sensitive outputs on the same device with the same clock, and use one of those for your main monitoring setup!

b. Keep it simple at first. Stick with ONE interface in the beginning. Experiment with aggregating stuff only after you’ve got a solid and predictable setup working off of ONE interface.

4. With your Windows 11 Audio tools, set up the sample rate and bit that you desire. I.E. Right Click the speaker icon in the Windows System Tray (Lower Right of the Task bar) and choose Sound Settings. Find the device you ultimately want to use and get it set up here first.

In this example I’ll choose a Realtek interface that’s built into my system motherboard (It came with some ASIO drivers, but they never have worked, oh well, ASIO4ALL to the rescue).

I’m using 24bit at 44.1khz (Go for 48khz if you prefer. I use 44.1khz purely for compatibility with some of my older external kit that can leach a clock signal over the SPDIF port, plus I typically don’t use this interface…this is merely a demo in case your interface has no native ASIO drivers).

5. Install ASIO Link Pro if you haven’t already. You can use the Windows Start Bar to search for “ASIO Link”. Open the ASIO Link Pro Tool (The 64bit one, it’s simply named ASIO Link Pro, and you also get one that’s named as a 32bit version) in the System Tray at lower right area of the Windows task bar. For starters I recommend toggling the following settings…
   
   

Note that sometimes System Tray icons get ‘folded up’ into a sub menu, so if you are missing the System Tray icons mentioned throughout this post, left click the little up arrow to Show Hidden Icons.

6. Getting into ASIO Link Pro…
   In case you’re wondering, it does come with Documentation, though it’s easy to miss. Some PDF files end up in whatever directory you’ve installed ASIO Link Pro on your system. I.E. “%System Drive%/Program Files (x86)/ASIOLinkPro”
   
   

Once you’ve launched the ASIO Link Pro Tool, Click the START ASIO button.

If it first throws up a dialogue asking you to choose an audio interface, pick ASIO4ALL. (Typical the first time it’s run, or anytime after the Reset settings button gets clicked).

If instead it gives you a Patch bay like this…click the Pick driver button and then select ASIO4ALL as the driver.

You should notice a new Icon in the system tray called asiolinktool.exe. It might be Green (everything connected properly and is good to go), or Pinkish (some kind of problem with the driver, need to trouble shoot it). Left click it at any time to pull a given ASIO Link Pro instance up. You can close them with the red X in the top right corner at any time to get them out of the way, and bring them back via the System Tray.

Hopefully at this point you end up with a working main ASIO Link Pro patch bay. This is where you will manage any output directly to your Audio Interface’s outputs (more on this later), as well as any ‘loopback’ connections that you might want to route off to other ASIO apps. The asiolinktool.exe icon in the System Tray will light up green when it’s properly connected to an interface, and it might even have a few default connections already routed for you.

Go ahead and toggle the Enable multi-clients option on, so it lights up green. When this is enabled, any app that calls on your ASIO Link Pro driver will get a fresh instance of ASIO Link Pro in the System Tray. This makes it possible to have loads of apps sharing the same audio device, all at the same time. You’ll manage INPUTS into your ASIO apps from those unique instances.

Open the ASIO Link Pro Tool panel again, and try the Test Tone.

If you’re getting a tone, then it’s time to try routing something through ASIO Link Pro!

If you’re having trouble getting this far, let me know. I’ll try my best to help trouble shoot.

Note, if you do have trouble getting a connection with ASIO4ALL/ASIO Link Pro, and things seem to ‘lock up’, right click the Windows Start Button, open a Task Manager, kill ASIO Link Pro tasks, and start over (Open the ASIO Link Pro Tool App again, click “Reset settings” and try again. It might be helpful to pop open that ASIO4ALL “Off-line Settings” app to isolate a single Audio Device (Say the internal audio on your motherboard) and then try ASIO Link Pro again.

8. Notice the sections of your main asiolinktool.exe instance.
   Across the top you have ASIOVADPRO Speakers IN. These correspond to the four 8 channel virtual WDM cables that now show up as a new audio device in Windows. There’s a short-cut to have a look at them with the WinMM CPanel button, or you can right click the speaker icon in your System Tray and pull up the ‘new style’ UI.
   
   

In the routing shown above, I’ve made the ASIOVADPRO Speakers 01 the system default. So now whatever plays in Windows routes right out to my speakers that are connected to the ASIO DRIVER OUT MIX pins.

Note, the Audio Interface on my motherboard has 4 INPUTS, and 8 OUTPUTS activated right now. (I can either click the ASIO CPanel button at the top right, or look in the System Tray to bring up the ASIO4ALL interface).

This means that the first four pins for the ASIO DRIVER IN row are my Audio Interface inputs (2 mic, and 2 line).

The first 8 pins in the ASIO DRIVER OUT MIX go to my audio card’s configured outputs.

Note we still have outputs 9 - 64 to use as loopback channels and such. More on that later…

So, at this point, I should be able to hear any windows sounds, stuff I play in the web browser, and any apps that use the ASIOVADPRO Speaker 01 drivers as their output.

The main mix at this point is also being sent out to an ASIOVADPRO MIX OUT; hence, any Windows WDM apps that use the ASIOVADPRO Mix drivers as an INPUT can record over that virtual cable.

9. There’s a whole lot more we can get into, as we haven’t even opened an ASIO client (Such as Bidule or Cubase) yet. Before I get into this, please see if you can make it this far.

In general, ASIO Apps, you will choose ASIO Link Pro as the audio device. I could route directly to outputs 1-8 from in such an app, or I could route to higher channels if I want to use the loopback rails to route audio elsewhere besides out of a hardware output. A new instance of the ASIO Link Pro routing panel will be added to the System Tray for each app that calls on the ASIO Link Pro driver.

For starters, you could launch Bidule, set it to use the full duplex ASIO driver: ASIO Link Pro. Here’s an example of how I’ve got mine set up at the moment.

In this case I’m running a pair of Delta 1010 Audio Interfaces that are word-clocked together, and M-Audio was good enough to provide a control panel that more or less treats the two units as one big interface (24 inputs counting the two monitor mixes and full duplex SPDIF connections), and 20 Outputs [16 Analogue and 2 stereo SPDIF])…those are tied into ASIO Link Pro, which has a 64x64 ASIO matrix to work with.

I’m running the Default Windows Audio stuff, all surround sound channels merged down into stereo, into Channels 25 and 26 of Bidule, and I have a Freebie Dead Duck Limiter VST2 plugin there (Even out the volume of a Youtube Playlist…so one doesn’t blow me out of the house, and can barely hear another one). Note, I intentionally went for ‘open ASIO Link Pro channels’ that my audio interface doesn’t use here.

I’ve got MIDI routed (white cables in bidule, the blue cables are audio) from my Arturia MIDI Controller into a MIDI matrix, and then on to my Fantom XR (connected to SPDIF inputs 9 & 10 on a Delta 1010), and an Instance of HALion 7. The XR bidules are for sending MIDI events between different apps over Bidule’s built in OSC servers/clients (networking protocols…I can do it over localhost and it’s even faster/lower latency than virtual MIDI ports).

All of the Audio inputs from my Delta 1010 Array mix down to Outputs 1&2, where my Studio Monitors are connected. From here, I can route anything into and out of Bidule that I like, and send it to any ASIO or WDM app, to any of the Delta 1010 outputs I like, or even out over the LAN to another PC that’s running ASIO Link Pro.

Notice in my main asiolinktool.exe instance, I’ve a few looper OUT connections on the ready. Those allow me to route something like Cubase or Dorico over channels 27 - 32 back into Bidule (or among each other). I.E. I could instruct Dorico to send Audio to channels 27 & 28, Cubase to 29 & 30, Band in a box to 31 & 32, all back into bidule (or directly to other apps via LOOPER).

I’ll come back and get into more detail on Routing various Apps about (to and from each other…both ASIO and WDM). Different DJ software, Skype, whatever. I need a break for now though

I’ll include some of my favorite stand-alone Bidule instance tricks as well.

It might be a couple days, gotta work some polls (local elections) tomorrow so we’ll see. I’ll jump back on this thread with more tips and examples ASAP.

At first it’s a little daunting to figure out ASIO Link Pro in the multi-client mode, but once you grasp the basics it becomes a major power-house. Route anything almost anywhere. You can even do a bit of mixing/recording directly in ASIO Link Pro itself.

[pittr]

Wow!! Thank you so much for this.. much appreciated! I didn`t expect a response at all, let alone this awesome tutorial. This world needs more people like you!

This total noob followed your instructions to a tee.. successfully ( I think).
I`m at least getting audio (quite low volume, though) out of Youtube, Foobar, Winamp, etc.

I also tried my daw (Reaper) and Bidule.. but no sound. Still trying to wrap my head around all the routing and options..

ps: Yeah, no rush at all with any of this. Whenever you have a moment is fine by me.

Thanks again m8!

[Brian_Roland]

@pittr

Thank you so much for this..

No problem.

Curious, what do you use to play General MIDI files? If you don’t have a nice GM player (the one built into Windows is garbage) I recommend you grab the free version of Dorico SE. Install and register it. This will give you access to HALion Sonic 7, and a base set of General MIDI sounds to go with it. Should you decide you don’t want Dorico, I think you can uninstall that and keep the Sonic player and instruments.

Plus, both of us having a common VSTi installed should make it a little easier for me to guide you through various tests and tricks when we finally get around to exploring bidule.

Also, would you mind making a snapshot of what your ASIO4ALL control panel looks like in the advanced edit mode? If I see what you’re working with there in terms of audio hardware, it will help me give better tests, tips, and examples. I’d like to get an idea of how many hardware inputs and outputs you have, and what type they are in the least.

Also, once I see what you have going on, I can hopefully help you figure out how to set up a fairly optimal gain staging scenario for your rig (You said the audio level was a bit low. Should be able to get some tones and pink noise and such to play through things and work out what levels actually are relative to what you hear).

Meanwhile, here's a quick run down for setting up Reaper...

First, make sure you’ve got ASIO Link Pro running.

Start Reaper and go to Options/Preferences (Ctrl+P), and choose Device in the left panel.

Change your Audio device settings so they look like this (You might prefer a different sample rate than mine. Make that adjustment if you like):

Click OK

What we’ve done there was instructed Reaper to use the full 64 channel range of ASIO Link Pro.

Load up a project or at least set up an audio track to play. I just started with a blank project and inserted the first MP3 I could find.

Pull the master volume down some (protect hearing and equipment if it booms too loud out of the gate).

If you play the project, you should hear it now out of the primary speakers (Audio Outputs 1 & 2). Remember that in ASIO Link Pro, the first outputs always represent direct connections to your hardware.
I.E. If your device has 8 audio channels, then outputs 1-8 go to those. Channels above your hardware limits can be used with the looper rails to bypass hardware and route audio into different ASIO apps.

Look in your Windows System Tray, and you should find there is a new instance of ASIO Link Pro with the name reaper.exe.

Note: Reaper likes to put ASIO connections to sleep if it’s not active. This means that if Reaper is not playing anything, and no tracks are armed, that reaper.exe instance of ASIO Link Pro will drop out of your system tray. So, if you need to get at the ASIO Link Pro instance at any point and it’s missing from your System Tray, just arm any Audio or VSTi track in Reaper, and it should come back.

Hence a quick tip when fiddling with an ASIO Link Pro setup in Reaper. Keep at least one audio or VSTi track armed. That’ll insure your ASIO Link Pro and ASIO4ALL instances are active and accessible in the Windows System Tray.

Open this reaper.exe ASIO Link instance and have a look at it. This is where you can route audio into Reaper. At first nothing will be connected, so none of your mics or instruments that might be plugged in are going to work for Reaper until we connect them here.

In the second row of pins, ASIO DRIVER IN, you should see however many inputs your audio device provides and is active back in ASIO4ALL.

You could connect this stuff one pin at a time in any kind of crazy cross wired method you like. You can even have multiple connections to a single pin (merge and mix streams directly in ASIO Link itself). Personally, when I’m working in a tracking DAW like Reaper I just do a perfect 1 to 1 parallel connection across the board. It keeps things simple and easy to remember.

In my case, my audio interface provides 24 inputs. I want a nice 1 to 1 parallel setup, so I’m just going to click the IN MIX 1-1 button and end up with this…(notice the red lines)

I can close the ASIO Link instance and get it out of the way.

Now I should be able to get my mics and instruments going into Reaper.

Example:
I’ll make a track to record from a mic plugged into inputs 7 & 8 of my audio interface:

And another for my Fantom XR that’s plugged into inputs 9 & 10 of my audio interface:

Alas! The input from my Mic and my Fantom Keyboard is coming into Reaper.

So, what if I wanted to route something like Skype into Reaper?

First I’d direct Skype to use one of the special ASIOVADPRO virtual cables as its output driver. In this case I’ll isolate this app to use the second ASIOVADPRO Speaker 02 virtual cable. Since Skype is a built in Windows thing, I can find this in the Windows Audio settings (right click the speaker icon in the system tray, choose sound settings, or click the start button and type in sound settings to find it). Quite often web browser instances show up here as well, so you can divert audio from these into your special ASIOVADPRO drivers as well.

You can take this same approach with any app that uses WDM drivers. I.E. Media Monkey, Win Amp, whatever, though such apps might require you to choose drivers from somewhere in the app itself rather than going through the Windows control panel.

I’ll go back to my Reaper ASIO Link instance and connect to a pair of pins and take note of which ones I’m using. In this case I’ve chosen channels 33 & 34. (Notice the green lines)

I’ll close the ASIO Link Pro instance out of the way, and set up a track in Reaper to use Inputs 33 & 34.

So, what if I want to bring in audio from an app that uses ASIO Drivers? Did you grab Dorico SE? Open it up and let’s route Dorico into Reaper…

I’ve opened Dorico, and I’ll go to Edit/Device Setup…

I’ll choose ASIO Link Pro as the ASIO Driver, and pick a set of outputs beyond the range of my hardware. In my case I’ll go for channels 27 and 28.

I’ll go ahead and load a project into Dorico, one of the samples that comes with it will do fine.

Next, I need to find the Master instance of ASIO Link Pro in my System Tray. It will have the name asiolinktool.exe. In my case I already have some loopback connections done for channels 27-32, as I use these pretty frequently. Again note that I’m choosing matrix channels that are above the range of my hardware outputs. The grey connections are a bit hard to see so I’ve outlined them in red. I just use the mouse to draw in the connections. (notice the grey lines I’ve outlined with the grey box)

Finally, I go to the reaper.exe instance of ASIO Link Pro and make a connection from LOOPER IN to whatever ASIO HOST IN channels I want Reaper to use. I typically just keep it all parallel so it’s easy to keep up with. (notice the grey lines I’ve outlined with the red box)

So now I can make a Dorico Track in Reaper, and set its input to come from channels 27 & 28, arm the track, play the Dorico Score, and it pipes through Reaper.

So now you have the basics.

Do OUTPUTS from that main asiotool.exe instance of ASIO Link. So far we’ve mainly focused on INPUTS, but you can also use ASIO Link Pro to divert various OUTPUTS anywhere you like as well. In general, you can do direct connections to outputs from inside the App itself. I.E. If your audio device has 8 output channels, and you set any ASIO App to output to any of the channels 1 - 8, then it should go directly to/through the hardware outputs. If you select channels above the range of your hardware outputs then they just go ‘nowhere’ unless you connect them up to something like the LOOPER rail, network outputs, or one of the ASIOADVPRO virtual cable outputs of the main asiotool.exe instance.

Do INPUTS from the unique instance that comes up with each app using ASIO Link Pro as the audio device.

In general ASIO Link Pro will remember what you’ve done last for each app unless you do an ASIO Link Pro ‘reset’. You can also save/load sets of presets in ASIO Link Pro, and these can be reloaded at any time, or even into different app instances that might require similar routing scenarios.

ASIO Link Pro has loads of options and features beyond simple routing. There are other methods and workflows to set it up as well…but I recommend the simple system I’ve described here for now. With this kind of mentality it’s pretty simple.
Inputs from special multi-client ASIO Link Pro Instances (each app gets its own). Outputs from the main asiolinktool.exe instance. For small home studio setups, 64 channels should be more than enough to go with 1 to 1 parallel connections. That makes things easy to remember and allows for a pretty universal setup for almost any project.

[pittr]

Just getting in. Here are some screensnaps (individual posts, as new users are only allowed one embed per reply)..

[pittr]

[pittr]

[Brian_Roland]

Perfect. One question about the HD Audio Speaker. If you hover your mouse cursor over the HD Audio Speaker, how many channels does it say it supports?

How many spots to plug speakers in on the computer and what type?
I.E. Several 3.5mm holes, a single digital connection, whatever?

I find it interesting the way your ASIOVADPRO inputs are showing up as so many pairs of 2 rather than in 6 or 8 channel surround sound format (your last screen shot of the big asiolinktool.exe panel).

How many of those ASIOVADPRO Speaker (Play Tab) and Mix (Recording Tab) drivers do you get listed as a window’s device (tap the WinMM CPanel button and look for them there)?

Snapshot

While you’re poking around in that control panel, check the ‘Properties’ of your main audio interface. See if there are various ‘configuration options’ in the drivers. Be aware of what they are/offer, as with some interfaces it might impact what channels are available to you, how they can be hooked up, etc. Some might even a chip on board with a few ‘effects units’. You’ll usually also find some faders and such in there to ‘gain stage’ things to appropriate base levels for whatever speakers/headphones you’ve got plugged in.

I.E. You mentioned the levels being a bit too low/soft. Check the “Levels” tab if it has one, and crank that fader up…

Snapshot

Once I understand better, I’ll get more into some scenarios that make sense for that interface.

[pittr]

HD Audio Speaker: OUT 2x 48kHz 24 bits

Only one 3.5mm slot (that acts as both a mic and speaker jack). It`s a Thinkpad P52 laptop.

A total of 16 ASIOVADPRO drivers appear when I open the WinMM CPanel.

[Brian_Roland]

OK, makes sense…
Check my previous post on the “Properties” of your interface. I edited in an inquiry while you were responding.

[pittr]

fyi: As a new user here, my posts/images are very limited. Sometimes, I cannot reply nor embed an image due to the restrictions until after a certain period of time, it seems. Just mentioning it in case there`s unusual delays from my end..

Also, when you say..

check the ‘Properties’ of your main audio interface. See if there are various ‘configuration options’ in the drivers.

.. do you mean my Realtek Audio Properties? As in: Control Panel > Sound > RealTek Audio Default Device? Just wanna be sure..

thx!