Hi.

I am currently reinstalling my OS(XP) and it’s been a while since I had done it last. I don’t remember how I had set things up before. I need to remember to write things down.

There is onboard sound AC’97, but I only use the ins and outs from a M-Audio sound card. Both are enabled at the moment and running fine. It also works when I disable the AC’97 option. Im also using ASIO4all if that makes any difference.

I was wondering if I keep both enabled? Does it matter? Or should I disable the AC’97? My BIOS set-up allows me to switch the AC’97 option off.

Advice would be greatly appreciated.

do you have two different sets of speakers — i.e. one for the AC97, the other one for the m-audio?

If yes, try leaving the AC-97 running, however I would disable ALL windows system sounds via the control panel.

Then have windows sound run through the AC97 and your DAW through ASIO and your M-Audio.

This gives you the normal sound controls including master volume for all of your windows sounds.

However if you want to run everything through the same speakers or if you find you’re getting clicks while working inside your DAW, switch off the AC-97 in the bios, so Windows doesn’t even see it.

And then configure Windows sound to also use your M-Audio (however the windows master volume and any volume controls you may have on your keyboard may not work — at least they never did for the ASIO sound cards and modules I’ve had over the years.

If your M-Audio came with ASIO drivers, you probably shouldn’t need ASIO4all.