No sound when connected to digital mixer

[Duk Youn Kim]

Hello all

I have a cakewalk installed pc connected to digital mixer.

mixer is allen and heath QU 16

it requires ASIO driver which is available with official version on its website.

I need multitrack recording using QU16 and cakewalk.

When connected using the official ASIO drivers,

Everything seems to be working (at least I can get track signals that I need)

Except I don't get monitor input or playback sound.

After hours of research and experiments, it seems like it has something to do with ASIO drivers.

I can gurantee it is not a bitrate problem (at least in my case)

Digital Mixer uses ASIO drivers for multitrack recording,

while windows need WDM drivers for playback to PC

The problem is cakewalk using one driver only at a time for recording and playback.

so you get either ASIO only or WDM only.

There has to be a way to utilize ASIO for recording and WDM for playback

otherwise things just does not make sense

because it is a multitrack recording function that monitoring is not possible

Which is just a gamble.

You can only verify the recording once it is finished, and there is no way to fix it if the recording had problems.

So I contacted allen and heath and they told me that it is a cakewalk problem and I need to talk to cakewalk.

Is this why people migrate to Mac?

Any help guys?

[msmcleod]

It sounds like the A&H drivers don't support access via ASIO & WDM at the same time.

Cakewalk will be using ASIO for both recording & playback, whereas (as you've pointed out) Windows uses WDM/WASAPI.

If you check "Suspend Audio Engine When Cakewalk Is Not in Focus" within Preferences->Audio->Playback and Recording, then Cakewalk will release the ASIO driver while it is not in focus. This will allow Windows to use the WDM driver.
 

[Duk Youn Kim]

21 minutes ago, msmcleod said:

It sounds like the A&H drivers don't support access via ASIO & WDM at the same time.

Cakewalk will be using ASIO for both recording & playback, whereas (as you've pointed out) Windows uses WDM/WASAPI.

If you check "Suspend Audio Engine When Cakewalk Is Not in Focus" within Preferences->Audio->Playback and Recording, then Cakewalk will release the ASIO driver while it is not in focus. This will allow Windows to use the WDM driver.
 

Will definitely try that. Thank you very much!

One question though, what does it mean 'ASIO not being in focus'?

What I need is live monitoring, as well as playback monitor...

[msmcleod]

10 minutes ago, Duk Youn Kim said:

Will definitely try that. Thank you very much!

One question though, what does it mean 'ASIO not being in focus'?

What I need is live monitoring, as well as playback monitor...

It's not ASIO not being in focus, it's CAKEWALK not being in focus.  So when this setting is checked, if you bring  another application to the foreground, Cakewalk will stop its audio engine.

If you need Cakewalk to play while it's in the background, then don't use this setting.

What I don't understand is why you need WDM for playback.  Cakewalk will NOT be using WDM for playback, it'll be using ASIO.

The A&H ASIO Driver supports 32 channels of audio via ASIO in BOTH directions.

If you're playing back using another Windows application, then it may be using WDM.

What I do personally, is use my onboard sound card for Windows (a Realtek device), and run both my audio interface and onboard sound-card through a mixer (actually a Mackie Big Knob) - this way I can easily switch between the two.

[Duk Youn Kim]

44 minutes ago, msmcleod said:

It's not ASIO not being in focus, it's CAKEWALK not being in focus.  So when this setting is checked, if you bring  another application to the foreground, Cakewalk will stop its audio engine.

If you need Cakewalk to play while it's in the background, then don't use this setting.

What I don't understand is why you need WDM for playback.  Cakewalk will NOT be using WDM for playback, it'll be using ASIO.

The A&H ASIO Driver supports 32 channels of audio via ASIO in BOTH directions.

If you're playing back using another Windows application, then it may be using WDM.

What I do personally, is use my onboard sound card for Windows (a Realtek device), and run both my audio interface and onboard sound-card through a mixer (actually a Mackie Big Knob) - this way I can easily switch between the two.

 

ok

to explain in brief way,

I have a live situation and need multi track recording.

multi track recording is possible and established.

BUT because of ASIO driver thing

monitoring the multi track recording  is not possible with cakewalk

playback the multi track recording is not possible with cakewalk

I hope this makes more sense 😉

[msmcleod]

I suspect your ASIO output issue is not to do with Cakewalk, but instead a routing setup with your Mixer.

I've not used the A&H QU16 specifically, but normally mixers of this type let you decide whether each channel is coming from the audio inputs, or from USB.

You need to designate a stereo pair on the mixer that is fed from USB, and ensure that it is "hearing" the output from Cakewalk via the ASIO driver.
 

[Duk Youn Kim]

9 hours ago, msmcleod said:

I suspect your ASIO output issue is not to do with Cakewalk, but instead a routing setup with your Mixer.

I've not used the A&H QU16 specifically, but normally mixers of this type let you decide whether each channel is coming from the audio inputs, or from USB.

You need to designate a stereo pair on the mixer that is fed from USB, and ensure that it is "hearing" the output from Cakewalk via the ASIO driver.
 

 

 

I am not sure I understand you correctly, as this stuff gets deeper and deeper,

but according to my research, these kind of things are inevitable with anything that includes ASIO

Wikipedia describes ASIO like this.

ASIO bypasses the normal audio path from a user application through layers of intermediary Windows operating system software so that an application connects directly to the sound card hardware.

In addition, I've tried other windows DAW including cakewalk, P ro Tools, PreSonus Studio One, and many others,

But none of them had ability to use ASIO for recording and WDM for playback.

I am able to monitor these channels on my mixer but not on PC

I thought it was pretty simple and straightforward issue, but apparently not, it seems.

I don't think it is the mixer problem, but that of windows'

I hope the next version of cakewalk comes out with this thing solved.