Lovely rhythm game.

There are plenty of things that are great about this game, I recommend reading a bunch of the positive reviews for that. However, one of the only issues I have with this game is with the audio, which is particularly worse when regarding to a rhythm game.

ASIO (Audio Stream Input / Output)
- While initially playing the game, I noticed that there was always some sort of lag or latency between my presses and the sound of the actual song. I messed around with offset, making incremental changes of 1 to get the audio to sound correct. The range I tested from went -20 to +20 on the offset which is absolutely ridiculous, because I was never able to fix the lag that I was experiencing. However, once I switched to ASIO on my audio settings, everything just suddenly worked. I went back to 0 on my offset and latency became a thing of the past.

The Problem with ASIO:
- ASIO takes primary control over your desktop audio, meaning that DJ MAX takes full priority. As a result, if you want to do something while playing DJ MAX, you will not be able to hear anything, so for example:
1) Want to join a discord call? ==> You wont hear anybody talking
2) Want to record / stream yourself playing DJ MAX? ==> OBS will not pick up any audio source from DJ MAX
3) Want to watch a vid for a small break and play again? ==> You have to exit out of DJ MAX entirely to hear anything from your desktop, and the loading of the game is not quick like osu.

Conclusion:
My problem is with how ASIO works and the workarounds to it. While there are some third party programs you can use to bypass this, the fact that you have to do that is insane to me. You ultimately choose whether you want no lag in a RHYTHM GAME, or choose lag while being able to hear other sources from your desktop. Even if they have an offset, it legitimately felt like it never worked for me, so it became extremely infuriating over time. While the game itself is still very fun to play, this one issue is just so big that I wish there were other reviews that went into more detail into this deal breaker prior to me purchasing this game.

This is a must play for people who love rhythm games.