It's usually a good idea to just be in the habit of including the location you want the echo to appear no matter what you're doing, whether that means including -a or -s or a window name. If you're in the habit of always including the location, then you won't run into these types of problems.
As to why there is an issue with $asc()... it's because you're getting a numerical value and a number after /echo is treated as part of the command. You can see that by just using:
/echo 1
Use /help /echo and you'll understand why a number is part of the command.
