ESI has developed a number of key technologies over the years that are now part of many our products. One of the most important part in development always has been the interaction between hardware and software. Since several years, unique and exclusive driver technology such as EWDM and DirectWIRE are showing what is possible. The following paragraphs explain what makes our drivers special:

EWDM - Enhanced Audio MIDI Driver

Maybe you have been in this situation before: you are searching for a new audio interface, and you are forced to double check that it is compatible with the prefered audio software of your choice. Not every audio interface supports all of the common driver standards (like ASIO, MME, GSIF, WDM or DirectSound). Some do support multiple standards but only with limitations or worse, with weak performance. Maybe you had a look on the various internet discussion forums on the topic. If so, you surly found hundreds of questions from others checking if a certain hardware is compatible with a certain software. This is not surprising, as some of the driver standards such as ASIO are commonly used in multichannel audio applications, while others are used mainly in consumer applications like a DVD player software or even a game. And of course there are always exceptions. Every hardware, even every driver version behaves slightly different.

In the past it was important to make sure that the audio hardware you are using is not only compatible with the audio application of your choice, also you had to make sure that the driver for the hardware supports the required driver standard with an acceptable performance. Some users are even installing multiple soundcards in one system, just to be compatible with the different audio applications they use. Having one higher end card for the multichannel recording application and another lower end card for VoIP applications or even just the Windows system sounds is not really special. This is not surprising, considering that some vendors of higher level audio hardware even recommend in their manual to disable Windows system sounds and not to use pure consumer applications such as DVD player software.

Of course there are technical reasons for this. A typical consumer soundcard (such as the onboard sound solution on a mainboard) has a different design architecture compared to a professional audio interface. This results in different driver structures and features.

Our unique and exclusive EWDM audio driver technology is the answer that resolves all these issues. As a major extension to the Microsoft WDM driver standard that is compatible with all current Windows versions (including Windows Vista 32-bit and 64-bit with our new unified drivers), an EWDM driver integrates all commonly used driver standards into one single driver package.

One single unified driver package can be used on all Windows versions, you can use any fully ASIO 2.0, GSIF, MME, WDM (Kernel Streaming) or DirectSound compatible audio application with your EWDM supporting ESI hardware. All of these driver standards are supported at maximum possible performance, even at lowest latency settings. You want to play a software synthesizer in realtime or process audio input signals with software effect plugins on the fly? No problem: with an EWDM driver you can have latency settings depending on your system performance as low as 1.5ms (or even less!).

Of course this compatibility is not limited to professional audio applications - also any normal consumer application is compatible with EWDM driver technology. Just imagine you are creating your own surround DVD: in your multitrack application (for example Nuendo), you need to access the audio interface with ASIO. No problem with EWDM. Once you have an encoded Dolby Digital 5.1 or DTS ES 7.1 signal on a DVD, you can play the same signal via your favorite DVD player application using WDM. Some users of higher level audio hardware from other vendors need to use the onboard soundcard to playback the finished DVD. With your ESI hardware and its EWDM driver you don't have to worry - just use any application supporting any standard driver interface.

DirectWIRE - easy to use - endless possibilities

DirectWIRE is ESI's virtual digital patchbay that is layered between the physical hardware I/O channels and the driver interfaces to the various audio applications.

It allows you to virtually route audio streams within different audio applications. In a simple panel you can connect the inputs and outputs of the different driver standards (MME, WDM/DirectSound, ASIO, GSIF) and the physical inputs of the hardware with each other with virtual audio cables. It does not matter what driver standard is used for playback and which one is used for recording. You want to record streaming data from an internet broadcasting (like RealAudio) in your audio editor (like SoundForge)? No problem. You want to record multiple audio channels from a surround DVD playback (e.g. from WinDVD) into your multichannel application (e.g. SONAR)? Just do it! Of course the most classical feature is that you can directly record the output signal from GigaStudio into your audio/MIDI sequencer.