Two options for my DAC show

Under the Audio settings, my DAC seems to appear as 2 separate devices;

  1. Speakers - Weiss Firewire IO Audio
  2. ASIO Weiss Firewire IO [ASIO]

Any idea why it is appearing twice, and which one I should select? Thanks!

The first one uses the WASAPI driver framework (the native windows stuff), the second uses ASIO (alternative audio driver interface for windows published by Steinberg).

Both are bit-perfect. In many ways, WASAPI was engineered to eliminate the need for ASIO, and it’s newer, for the most part more fully featured, and more intensively engineered. Working with the ASIO API is like time traveling back to 1997, and not in a good way.

ASIO supports native DSD playback, and WASAPI does not. WASAPI can play DSD using DoP, which is just as bit-perfect but requires a little bit more machinery within Roon and in the DAC on the receiving end.

WASAPI gives us more options for doing good volume control integration and we are able to integrate with hardware-level high quality volume controls using WASAPI that ASIO does not make available.

I prefer WASAPI personally, but I do run ASIO for one device here to access native DSD playback.