WASAPI non-exclusive

[Louis_R]

@fese

(to me it just sounds like that japanese horseradish…)

@Pathfinder

Sometimes you record music in real-time (playing MIDI keyboard) so you need the lowest possible latency – then you need ASIO with exclusive access.
Sometimes you need shared environment where latency isn’t an issue at all – then you would use WASAPI shared.

Can you imagine anyone who needs to switch between the above two modes several times a day, to do all the steps you described? All the worrying about all the conditions met? Wheter a crash occurs somewhere?

For example, I cannot imagine going through all the audio devices or channels and disabling/enabling “Allow apps to gain exclusive access” all the time several times a day. That’s a headache.

What are you talking about ? There’s no such “exclusive access” for ASIO.
I believe you are completely misunderstanding how that works.

All ASIO drivers released around 2010 and later are multi-client compatible, that means the inputs and outputs of the device can be used by multiple applications and drivers simultaneously.
ASIO has priority over other drivers because it is requesting the exclusive use of the channels, it means that when “Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device” is enabled, then it will obviously prevent Windows from using these same channels at the same time. Since ASIO is requesting the exclusive use, Windows will let go of the channels.

If you want to use the same input and output channels in ASIO and Windows at the same time, then you literally need to disable the Exclusive Mode setting, so Windows can also access the channels.
The Exclusive Mode setting in Windows will only and exclusively change how Windows’ own audio system will handle the channels, it has never ever been related to ASIO at all, and the ASIO performance will remain the same under any circumstances.

You really are understanding this part the other way around. Once Windows has been set to Shared mode you should never have to worry about it anymore, there is absolutely no need to “switch between the two modes several times a day” – what the actual heck.
And if ever Cubase was working in WASAPI, you will then lose some performance – in terms of latency and stability – over using ASIO, because the Cubase I/O stream will be managed by Windows and not the dedicated ASIO driver, which is probably not what you want — and not to mention that with WASAPI you can only select one input and one output, which basically makes your fancy 18-in/20-out interface useless.

@Pathfinder

Does your setup not ignore Windows volume controls?

No, we obviously cannot control the ASIO volume from Windows, and if ever WASAPI was available in Cubase that’s actually the only “advantage” you would get.
Do I care about not being able to control Cubase volume from Windows ? Not at all.
I have the Control Room for this purpose, this way I can have different volume between Cubase and Windows (with my MIDI controller for Control Room main volume and my keyboard’s volume knob for Windows).

I really can’t imagine working in WASAPI and having to open the Windows mixer everytime I want to only lower the volume of Windows without lowering Cubase at the same time. It’s a complete waste of time and against any good workflow principle.