USB Audio Driver Support

Third Party Windows Drivers

For some applications it may be desirable to use a third-party driver for Windows. A number
reasons exist as to why this may be desirable:

• In order to support UAC 2.0 on Windows versions earlier than 10
• The built-in Windows support is typically designed for consumer audio devices, not for professional audio devices
• The built in drivers support sound APIs such as WASAPI, DirectSound, MME, but not ASIO.

For advanced feature support in professional applications using Windows we recommend the USB Audio Class 2.0 Driver from Thesycon, which includes the following features:

• Available for Windows 10 and Windows 11 operating systems
• USB Audio Class 1.0 and 2.0 asynchronous operation
• Designed for professional audio devices and consumer-style devices
• Supports ASIO for transparent and low-latency audio streaming
• Supports Windows sound APIs such as WSAPI, DirectSound, MME
• Supports high-end audio features such as bit-perfect PCM up to 768 kHz sampling rate, native DSD format (through ASIO) up to DSD1024
• Multiple clock sources supported, such as SPDIF or WCLK inputs
• MIDI 1.0 class, including MIDI port sharing
• DFU (Device Firmware Upgrade), including a GUI utility for firmware update
• Control panel application for driver status/control
• Additional advanced and custom features including signing, branding etc available on request from Thesycon

Thesycon provides a free evaluation driver which can be used with the XMOS audio development kits.  This driver includes all the features above, but is restricted to use with XMOS devices and after 60 minutes use introduces a beep tone every 5 mins into the output.