I prefer to use ASIO drivers to bypass Windows handling of sound. The software that comes with a sound card can handle it more directly, and any tweaks can be easily adjusted in one place. Over the years, Microsoft has been integrating a lot of additional DSP functions into their OS. On Windows 7 I experienced the Windows limiter being very slow to recover after an over. In WinXP mixing was 24-bit if the sampling rate was kept at 48000. Before that, sound was always handled entirely in the VxD drivers and the DSP chip. Programs and hardware supporting ASIO was OS-agnostic, and continued working the same after an upgrade from XP to 7/2008.
I prefer to use ASIO drivers to bypass Windows handling of sound. The software that comes with a sound card can handle it more directly, and any tweaks can be easily adjusted in one place. Over the years, Microsoft has been integrating a lot of additional DSP functions into their OS. On Windows 7 I experienced the Windows limiter being very slow to recover after an over. In WinXP mixing was 24-bit if the sampling rate was kept at 48000. Before that, sound was always handled entirely in the VxD drivers and the DSP chip. Programs and hardware supporting ASIO was OS-agnostic, and continued working the same after an upgrade from XP to 7/2008.