Not really a Renoise question but I can’t seem to find a definite answer.
On my Win XP machine with an Echo Gina soundcard, the ASIO driver refuses to work with more than one app at a time.
Now, my question is whether this is a limitation of the ASIO standard itself or with my soundcard? Should it be possible to run several apps at the same time all using ASIO? And if not, why the hell did they design it that way?
Seems like you are right, I have a Emu 1212 and can also only run one app with ASIO at a time. I use directsound for 2:nd or 3:rd app which doesn’t seem to have this restriction.
as far as I know is an ASIO limitation. you could try to use Asio4all emulation together with your usual ASIO driver to see if you can use them at the same time, but I doubt that
OK thanks. The reason I’m asking is that the soundcard is multi-output and only the ASIO driver can assign audio to the different outputs, so only the app that hogs the ASIO driver can use the multiple outputs. DirectSound and everything else just sees output 1/2.
Hello lads…
There’s something like “multi asio mode” ( should be supported by drivers, and hardware as well ), and it’s supported by some music cards / interfaces . I don’t remember which one exactly, but if you’ll put something in google, you’ll find it for sure.
Cheerio!
ASIO is implemented differently in various brands. Some brands don’t allow sharing the driver at all, some allow sharing depending if you split outputs (meaning if you have 10 outs, you can divide 10 outputs across two or more applications depending on how you reserve them in advance in the driver)
Even if a driver allows sharing, some applications demand the whole driver where partially shared outputs won’t do for that application.
If you wish to purchase an audiocard where sharing ASIO drivers are important, then this is a thing you have to look out for. IMHO i would pick an audiocard that has a good soundquality instead of magic features.
This is possible if you use Reaper as a hub
Reaper has a thing called Rearoute and this is basically a faked ASIO driver
What you do is set Reaper up as you normal ASIO app then every other app you load you assign it’s ASIO to Rearoute instead of the ASIO soundcard
Now all your apps will be fed into Reaper as selectable inputs and then you can send them out to whatever output you want on your audio card 
Bungle
I have an Echo MIA and it has four internal virtual outs. Each virtual out can hold a separate ASIO/DX output. I don’t think the Echo Gina doesn’t have that function. (just oepn the soundcards console panel to be sure)
Try the 'limit to stereo in/out" function in the audio preferences tab. If Renoise occupies all 4 virtual outputs, there’s none left for other programs to use.