Might conflicting ASIO drivers be causing system crashes?

[Canino78]

Hello,

I ran into a kinda similar problem a few weeks ago, but the issue was resolved. You can view that forum here:

 

I have a Line6 TonePort UX8 that I use as an audio interface and a Behringer U-Phoria UMC404HD that I only use for MIDI. They are both USB ASIO interfaces and I'm using them in parallel, not connected, so they are neither synced or clocked together. In Cakewalk Preferences I have the Line6 set as the audio device and the Behringer as the MIDI device, and this works fine...

However, if I try to start Cakewalk with the Behringer interface plugged in, a few seconds after the Cakewalk spalsh screen appears, the system crashes and I get the Blue Screen of Death.

I can start Cakewalk with the Line6 just fine, and the most perculiar thing is: if I plug in the Behringer interface after Cakewalk has started there's no problem. I get the message box asking if I want to add the device to the session, select "yes" and it's completely fine and they both work together.

I also have no problem having both interfaces active when I'm not using Cakewalk. But something is happening as Cakewalk starts that causes the system to crash, if I have my behringer interface plugged in. Possibly the drivers competing for permissions? Cakewalk getting confused about which drivers are which? Of course the easy workaround is, 'don't start Cakewalk with the Behringer interface plugged in', and that's fine - that's what I've been doing. But I was wondering if anyone knows why this might be happening? Just as a matter of interest.

[Promidi]

It would probably depend of the specific drivers and audio interface.

For instance, I have an Asus Xonar DS PCI card and a Focusrite 2i2 2nd gen Audio interface.  Both have their respective native ASIO drivers installed.  Cakewalk only uses the Focusrite (The Asus is greyed out as expected)

I do not suffer BSODS - even when reducing buffer size.  I always use 256 samples at 48khz

I have also disabled the Intel and Nvidia High definition Audio Controllers. I did this in Device Manger > System devices. Now they are not even listed in "Sound, Video and Game Controllers"

[scook]

ASIO is an audio specification. If one interface is used just to connect MIDI devices to the PC, it does not need an audio driver at all.

Here is a little more info about ASIO drivers in general.

There should be at most one ASIO driver installed for each interface.

If a generic "driver" such as ASIO4All is installed it can be a problem for interfaces that have a real ASIO driver installed because the generic driver serves as a driver for all audio interfaces.

Some manufacturers do not supply real ASIO drivers instead relying on generic drivers.

Some DAW manufacturers such as Steinburg, MAGIX and FL Studio install generic ASIO drivers.

CbB uses the registry entries in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ASIO to determine the drivers on the PC.

 

 

[Canino78]

Thanks for the info everyone!

What I need to find out is - is the problem with Cakewalk, Drivers, Windows or something else causing the Blue Screens? It's as if Cakewalk causes the crashs, but the origin of the problem ends up being in the drivers - as was the case with the Buffer Rate issue I previously had caused by the Nvidia driver, but occuring within Cakewalk.

On 7/26/2020 at 3:28 AM, scook said:

If one interface is used just to connect MIDI devices to the PC, it does not need an audio driver at all.

Okay cool - so by that logic, do I even need to have the Behringer driver enabled to use it's MIDI functionality? Disabling it might solve my BSOD problem.

If it helps diagnose what might be going on, here's some reoccuring errors I get from Event Viewer that might be related to the crashes. I get a lot of errors that seem to relate to the Line6 and what might be a USB driver, but I've never had a problem with it. Windows says everything is up to date. I don't have any system tools to read the dump files from the BSOD yet but I'll try to ge that installed.

Quote

Kernel PnP: The driver \Driver\WUDFRd failed to load for the device WpdBusEnumRoot\UMB\2&37c186b&0&STORAGE#VOLUME#_??_USBSTOR#DISK&VEN_GENERIC&PROD_STORAGE_DEVICE&REV_0207#000000000207&0#.

Side by Side: Activation context generation failed for "C:\windows\system32\L6DriverControlPanel.cpl".

I  get these errors quite often regardless of whether I got a Blue Screen that day, and they're not affecting the functionality of the interface.

Here's the BSOD log I got after I tried to start Cakewalk with the Behringer interface connected:

Quote

BugcheckCode 80
BugcheckParameter1 0xfffff8a016e88000
BugcheckParameter2 0x0
BugcheckParameter3 0xfffff8800bd5e85f
BugcheckParameter4 0x0
SleepInProgressfalse
PowerButtonTimestamp0

 

Cheers for the help everyone!

 

Edited July 27, 2020 by Canino78

[scook]

2 minutes ago, Canino78 said:

Okay cool - so by that logic, do I even need to have the Behringer driver enabled to use it's MIDI functionality? Disabling it might solve my BSOD problem.

ASIO drivers have nothing to do with MIDI. The interface uses a different driver for MIDI.