Audio Pipeline Questions

Hello - I have questions on audio paths in WIN10 Pro for Workstations. I am successfully playing hi-res FLAC files in Audirvana Origin 1.0.4 (just upgraded to 1.0.5, but haven’t used it yet). For reference I am enjoying the experience. I am using 8-core Xeon-2.4GHz machine w/ 128gb-icc, and connecting to AVM70 w/ HDMI from NVIDIA Quadro RTX 5000 w/ GPU acceleration. I have gotten familiar with the WIN10 audio pipeline options from using Room Equalization Wizzard and FlexASIO drivers that provide an ASIO wrapper for non-ASIO devices like my NVIDIA card and have had good success in avoiding Win Audio Services w/ WASAPI in exclusive mode.

With that background, I am excited to find have found a player that avoids random Windows interference and has a minimal, clean path from media file to the audio processor. The first time I used Audirvana, I saw the AVM70 (NVIDIA High Definition Audio) listed and selected ASIO and it seemed to play my material perfectly and passed through & maintained every tracks bit-rate & freq undisturbed. Since then, with no changes to the Win or Audirvana settings except closing the app and restarting on another day, I’ve had problems getting the AVM connected (HDMI) and tried various options. I haven’t been able to get KS to work ever, but I did get the WASAPI option to connect and again it seemed to play well. The only clear issue I had was that when I switched to WASAPI and got it playing, somehow my 2-channel was being sent from Audirvana as 5.1 (DAC status in lower right showed 5.1 and indeed system was playing 5.1). Prior to this, I was leaving the NVIDIA set as 5.1, but my AVM would only play the available (LF/RF) signals based on speaker profiles set in AVM (selectable as 2.0 or 2.1). With the the current working setup, I had to change setting for NVIDIA to LF/RF to get correct playback on AVM.

So for the questions:

With Audirvana setup w/ WASAPI, was NVIDIA allowed to convert 2.0 to 5.1, or was this being done in Win Audi Services?
Do you have any more detailed documentation on setting up Win10 computer & output devices?
With WASAPI selected - does Audirvana use WASAPI(exclusive) mode to bypass Windows Audio Service? (which performs unidentified random acts of signal mess about)
With Audirvana systems control/locks on which seem a big benefit, does that initiate WSAPI(exclusive) and/or does it manage/limit any impact on signals through Windows Audio Services so don’t have to worry about this?
Specifically do you have instructions to get KS working which should be cleanest/reliable pipe?
Is there a way to see the full path from source file to output to audio device? The link below is from the FlexASIO website and shows the path options in WIN10 - it would be great to understand this detail on how Audirvana works.

Thanks ahead for any ideas/info. I am enjoying Audirvana now and would like to understand and be more confident in the audio pipeline and how to work setup to best advantage.

Thx,
DL

[Win10 Pipe w/ FlexASIO, Port Audio, WASAPI(exclusive), KS, etc.](https://g.gravizo.com/svg?digraph%20G%20{ rankdir%3D"LR" style%3D"dashed" fontname%3D"sans-serif" node[fontname%3D"sans-serif"] subgraph%20clusterUserMode%20{ label%3D"Windows%20user%20mode" subgraph%20clusterApplicationProcess%20{ label%3D"Application%20process" Host[label%3D"ASIO%20host\napplication"] subgraph%20clusterFlexASIO%20{ label%3D"FlexASIO" FlexASIO[label%3D"ASIO\ndriver"] subgraph%20clusterPortAudio%20{ label%3D"PortAudio" PortAudio[label%20%3D%20"Frontend"] subgraph%20{ rank%3D"same" node%20[color%3D"red"%3B%20penwidth%3D3] PortAudioMME[label%3D"MME"] PortAudioDirectSound[label%3D"DirectSound"] PortAudioWASAPI[label%3D"WASAPI"] PortAudioWDMKS[label%3D"WDM-KS"] } } } } subgraph%20{ rank%3D"same" MME[label%3D"MME\nlibrary"] DirectSound[label%3D"DirectSound\nlibrary"] WASAPI[label%3D"WASAPI\nlibrary"] } subgraph%20{ rank%3D"same" WASAPIShared[label%3D"WASAPI\n(shared)"] WASAPIExclusive[label%3D"WASAPI\n(exclusive)"] } subgraph%20clusterWindows%20{ label%3D"Windows%20Audio%20Service%20(audiosrv%2C%20audiodg)" PreMix[label%3D"Pre-mix\nAPOs"] Mix[label%3D"Mixing"] PostMix[label%3D"Post-mix\nAPOs"] } KS[label%3D"Kernel%20Streaming\nlibrary"] } WDM[label%3D"Windows%20audio\ndevice%20driver\n(WDM%2C%20kernel%20mode)"] Hardware[label%3D"Hardware\ndevice"] Host->FlexASIO FlexASIO->PortAudio PortAudio->{ PortAudioMME PortAudioDirectSound PortAudioWASAPI PortAudioWDMKS } PortAudioMME->MME PortAudioDirectSound->DirectSound PortAudioWASAPI->WASAPI PortAudioWDMKS->KS MME->WASAPIShared DirectSound->WASAPIShared WASAPI->WASAPIShared WASAPI->WASAPIExclusive WASAPIShared->PreMix PreMix->Mix Mix->PostMix PostMix->KS WASAPIExclusive->KS KS->WDM WDM->Hardware } )

Hello @dlouth,

Can you send us a copy of the “Debug Info” when you have this issue? You can get it in Audirvana Settings>My account

Note: By clicking on the Debug Info button, Audirvana automatically copies all its content, all you have to do is paste it in response to this message

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