Posted August 13, 2008 - 1:03 pm
High-quality PC audio is important to me, as I spend a lot of time listening to music on my desktop. In previous columns I've discussed the aural advantages of lossless audio codecs (like FLAC), discrete sound cards, and specialty music player software. Alas, even with all of those tools installed and properly configured, it is possible to suffer less-than-optimal sound on a Windows XP-based PC, as the operating system has a tendency to muck with music without your consent. Happily, a free, easy-to-use program, called ASIO4ALL, addresses this annoying Windows habit.