WASAPI not bypassing windows audio processing

[ashenkin]

Hi Folks,

I have a Dell laptop, and it has "speaker enhancement" controllable via the Dell Audio app. Of course, I would like to completely bypass this when listening via mediamonkey on my nice headphones. I * could* just turn it off. However, it was a little disturbing to find that the audio was still being processed by this "speaker enhancement", even when MM was using the WASAPI output plugin.

Any idea what's going on here? Shouldn't WASAPI bypass all attempts by Windows to process the audio signal, and just pass it to the output DAC more-or-less directly?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts...

Win 7 Enterprise x64
MM 4.1.1.1703
WASAPI output plugin v 1.1
Dell M3800 with Waves MaxxAudio® Pro suite of advanced audio enhancement tools

[Lowlander]

Not very familiar with this, but is exclusive mode enabled in the WASAPI plugin in MediaMonkey? Also check which audio device is selected in the WASAPI plugin.

[ashenkin]

Thanks lowlander. Exclusive mode fixes the issue (though switching devices doesn't). But, still, should this be the case? Even operating in shared mode, shouldn't the audio streams bypass Windows messing with it? Isn't that the point of WASAPI? I realize this probably isn't MM's issue, but I figure that there are plenty of folks here qualified to address the question...

[nohitter151]

Thanks lowlander. Exclusive mode fixes the issue (though switching devices doesn't). But, still, should this be the case?

Yes. Exclusive mode is necessary for bit-perfect output.