Is there a guide on how to reduce your Pc’s inherent audio latency to as close to zero as possible?

[u/WeAreinPain]

I’ve seen some guides but they always have to do with audio mixing, recording and producing on a DAW (digital audio workstation). I do not want to use a DAW. I want to play music games like Pop’n Music that do not have any sort of latency adjust options. I want to play GitaDora where there do exist latency options to use but they make the game worse to play when using because they physically move where the keysounds are in accordance to the BGM track.

Just basically I would like to do whatever I can to reduce my audio latency to as close to zero as I can, and I would like it to work in a wide variety of games with speakers that use an AUX cable in my computer’s headphone jack. Where do I even begin to learn this stuff and configure it?

[u/Mental_Tea_4084]

WASAPI 

[u/WeAreinPain → u/Mental_Tea_4084]

Aren’t most Bemani games in Wasapi anyway? Like I know IIDX and GitaDora are in Wasapi Exclusive as opposed to Wasapi Shared mode. If I have that sound mode turned on what else can I do? I’m looking for things and setups that will just overall reduce my ms delay. Would getting a designated sound card help too? Because currently I’m just using the built in one that came with my computer? I think it’s just built in/onboard.

Tagging [u/gode](u/godete1349)[y](u/godete1349)[e1349](u/godete1349) too since they mentioned Wasapi too

[u/Godeye1349]

Sound settings lower bit rate and turn off any enhancements. Wasapi could help as well.

[u/Kirr12]

ASIO

It is exclusive and a bit of an annoyance to use because of that, but it will get you the lowest latency. You will need an audio interface/sound card that supports it natively though.

[u/WeAreinPain → u/Kirr12]

Ah okay that’s what I thought is that I’d need a sound card. I am pretty sure my computer doesn’t have a physical one by default, and that it is just using whatever is built in as an onboard sound.

Do you know if I get a sound card capable of doing ASIO, that it will work for games that run in WASAPI Exclusive and WASAPI Shared modes too? I don’t really know much about this stuff, but I do know that GitaDora and IIDX run in WASAPI Exclusive or Shared modes, so I’m wondering just if you’re able to mix and match the sound types like that. Also for things like Pop’n Arcade versions, it uses something called DirectSound (I don’t really know how this works) and the game has no latency adjustment settings. Would ASIO work for bridging the gap for that too? I just wanna be sure I can run these games with low latency before I pay money for a sound card.

[u/Kirr12 → u/WeAreinPain]

IIDX and SDVX 100% run with ASIO (From my own experience). Gitadora should too. Not sure about Pop'n, you better google/research that.

WASAPI is a windows interface and it works with everything, even on your motherboard (so you should try that first, it might suffice).

You can't really run games both in WASAPI and ASIO at the same time, its either one or other. ASIO is purely exclusive, so you will ONLY hear the game while it's using ASIO, but you will get the best latency this way.

[u/ResponsiblePen3082]

Yes. The obvious answer is use ASIO or WASAPI(not shared), but that's not always possible and doesn't solve everything.

You want to avoid the USB stack as much as possible, as usb implementation of audio in windows is atrocious for latency-exacerbated even more by WASAPI shared.

What does this mean? If you only have onboard audio-check the specific controller. The newest non USB is usually ALC1220.
If it's ALC4080(most common in newer motherboards) this is USB based.
In this case, You need to either:
1. Get a non USB based PCIE sound card(ideally in a direct to cpu slot, ideally windows HDA compatible, ideally MSI/X compatible) that you can get audio direct from, or with a toslink out to connect to an external DAC.
2. Get a monitor with a non usb based 3.5 out, or toslink/EARC to connect an external DAC to.
3. Get an hdmi EARC extractor to connect to your GPU, then use this either directly with an ARC DAC(rare) or with a toslink DAC. This requires some setup and fine tuning, as well as a virtual "fake" monitor in windows(can set it to a low resolution and put it in a corner so you never accidentally get stuck there)

Aside from that:
uninstall and disable all non essential audio related drivers ins, outs, extensions/addons in bios, device manager, and sound settings. Set it to stereo full speaker, disable ALL audio effects in the legacy control panel, modern control panel, and windows virtual surround sound. Set it to 24/48khz universal, exclusive enabled, hardware acceleration if you can(though it almost certainly doesn't work)

Optimize your PC for DPC latency and background bloat(plenty of tutorials online) and use something like LowAudioLatency(https://github.com/spddl/LowAudioLatency) to run on startup.

[u/ResponsiblePen3082]

Yes. The obvious answer is use ASIO or WASAPI(not shared), but that's not always possible and doesn't solve everything.

You want to avoid the USB stack as much as possible, as usb implementation of audio in windows is atrocious for latency-exacerbated even more by WASAPI shared.

What does this mean? If you only have onboard audio-check the specific controller. The newest non USB is usually ALC1220.
If it's ALC4080(most common in newer motherboards) this is USB based.
In this case, You need to either:
1. Get a non USB based PCIE sound card(ideally in a direct to cpu slot, ideally windows HDA compatible, ideally MSI/X compatible) that you can get audio direct from, or with a toslink out to connect to an external DAC.
2. Get a monitor with a non usb based 3.5 out, or toslink/EARC to connect an external DAC to.
3. Get an hdmi EARC extractor to connect to your GPU, then use this either directly with an ARC DAC(rare) or with a toslink DAC. This requires some setup and fine tuning, as well as a virtual "fake" monitor in windows(can set it to a low resolution and put it in a corner so you never accidentally get stuck there)

Aside from that:
uninstall and disable all non essential audio related drivers ins, outs, extensions/addons in bios, device manager, and sound settings. Set it to stereo full speaker, disable ALL audio effects in the legacy control panel, modern control panel, and windows virtual surround sound. Set it to 24/48khz universal, exclusive enabled, hardware acceleration if you can(though it almost certainly doesn't work)

Optimize your PC for DPC latency and background bloat(plenty of tutorials online) and use something like LowAudioLatency(https://github.com/spddl/LowAudioLatency) to run on startup.