Portaudio Windows ASIO with MSVC

ASIO is a low latency audio API from Steinberg. To compile an ASIO application, you must first download the ASIO SDK from Steinberg. You also need to obtain ASIO drivers for your audio device.

This tutorial assumes that you have 3 directories set up at the same level (side by side), one containing PortAudio, one containing the ASIO SDK and one containing your Visual Studio project:

/ASIOSDK2 
/portaudio
/DirContainingYourVisualStudioProject

First, make sure that the Steinberg SDK and the portaudio files are "side by side" in the same directory.

Open Microsoft Visual C++ and create a new blank Console exe Project/Workspace in that same directory.

For example, the paths for all three groups might read like this:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98\My Projects\ASIOSDK2
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98\My Projects\portaudio
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98\My Projects\Sawtooth

Next, add the following Steinberg ASIO SDK files to the project Source Files:

asio.cpp                        (ASIOSDK2\common)
asiodrivers.cpp                 (ASIOSDK2\host)
asiolist.cpp                    (ASIOSDK2\host\pc)

Then, add the following PortAudio files to the project Source Files:

pa_asio.cpp                     (portaudio\src\hostapi\asio)
pa_allocation.c                 (portaudio\src\common)
pa_converters.c                 (portaudio\src\common)
pa_cpuload.c                    (portaudio\src\common)
pa_dither.c                     (portaudio\src\common)
pa_front.c                      (portaudio\src\common)
pa_process.c                    (portaudio\src\common)
pa_ringbuffer.c                 (portaudio\src\common)
pa_skeleton.c                   (portaudio\src\common)
pa_stream.c                     (portaudio\src\common)
pa_trace.c                      (portaudio\src\common)
pa_win_hostapis.c               (portaudio\src\os\win)
pa_win_util.c                   (portaudio\src\os\win)
pa_win_waveformat.c             (portaudio\src\os\win)
pa_x86_plain_converters.c       (portaudio\src\os\win)
patest_saw.c                    (portaudio\test)  (Or another file containing main() 
                                                   for the console exe to be built.)

Although not strictly necessary, you may also want to add the following files to the project Header Files:

portaudio.h                     (portaudio\include)
pa_asio.h                       (portaudio\include)

These header files define the interfaces to the PortAudio API.

Next, go to Project Settings > All Configurations > C/C++ > Preprocessor > Preprocessor definitions and add PA_NO_WMME;PA_NO_DS to any entries that might be there.

eg: WIN32;_CONSOLE;_MBCS changes to WIN32;_CONSOLE,_MBCS;PA_NO_WMME;PA_NO_DS

This prevents pa_win_hostapis.c from attempting initialization of the Windows MME and DirectSound versions of PortAudio. Windows MME and DirectSound are not used in this project and therefore have not been added.

Then, on the same Project Settings tab, go down to Additional include directories: and enter the following relative include paths.

..\portaudio\include,..\portaudio\src\common,..\asiosdk2\common,..\asiosdk2\host,..\asiosdk2\host\pc

You'll need to make sure the relative paths are correct for the particular directory layout you're using. The above should work fine if you use the side-by-side layout we recommended earlier.

You should now be able to build any of the test executables in the portaudio\test directory. Suggest that you start with patest_saw.c because it's one of the simplest test files.

SVN instructions Back to the Tutorial

--- Chris Share, Tom McCandless, Ross Bencina