USB mic grayed out in PREFERENCE>AUDIO>DEVICES

[Laurence Levin]

I have a Zoom H4N Pro recorder that has a USB mic feature. I want to use the stereo mic to record acoustic guitar in Cakewalk. I set the Zoom device to 44k/24 bit depth, same as my Cakewalk project. Cakewalk recognizes the Zoom ASIO driver in Devices, but it is grayed out, and I can't select it.

The Zoom USB mic is recognized as a WASAPI Shared device in Windows 10, but then my Focusrite Scarlett Soundcard isn't recognized, so I can't use it for playback.

Any suggestions?

 

Edited September 28, 2020 by Laurence Levin

[scook]

To change ASIO drivers both the input and output must be deselected before selecting a new driver.

ASIO uses one I/O driver at a time.

 

[Laurence Levin]

Ah, Thanks!!! Can I use one for input and another for output? 

[scook]

ASIO allows any number input devices and any number output devices as long as they all use the same driver.

For most hardware this means the input device and the output device must be the same device.

A few manufacturers supply drivers that support multiple interfaces but AFAIK none of them support mixing devices by different manufacturers.

 

[M C]

I wasn't using ASIO drivers; my Driver Mode was set to WASAPI Shared, but I could only select one USB input device at a time. 

When I set the Driver Mode to MME (32-bit) everything was automatically un-greyed and checked, and I was able to record and monitor all of my inputs simultaneously. 

The other modes either had greyed-out devices, incorrect or unlisted devices, or did not record some inputs correctly (i.e. the audio was severely distorted.)

 

Edited May 6, 2021 by M C

[John Vere]

Well I depends on your Audio interfaces drivers. Not all ASIO Interfaces support other driver modes. My Tascam hates WASAPI Exclusive and My Motu doesn't recognize WDM or MME etc.  

The Zoom probably has poorly written audio drivers and might not support WASAPI. 

There's been other posts in the past where people couldn't get this to work smoothly. The Zoom becomes your audio interface sort of but it was not really designed as such. 

The Focusrite seems happy with all modes more or less.  I had both my on board and the Focusrite with all modes except WASAPI shared. MME I loose the other inputs and outputs.  I would assume your Focusrite uses a similar driver so this is a Zoom driver issue, nothing to do with Cakewalk. 

Edited May 7, 2021 by John Vere

[Noel Borthwick]

@M CTo clarify, in WASAPI shared you can use a completely different audio device as input from the audio output device. This is one of the advantages of WASAPI mode.
However we don’t support using multiple different output devices at the same time. Let me know what specific combinations are not allowed. If you post a screenshot of your audio settings it will be clearer.

[John Vere]

Yes thinking of what Noel just said you would be messing with which driver is in control of your timing and latency calculation. For accuracy you definitely need ASIO. 
And this is the reason only one ASIO device can be used at a time. Cakewalk needs the driver to calculate the latency and this is not possible when 2 different devices with 2 different specs are involved 

[Noel Borthwick]

John ASIO is not an option when using USB input only devices. It should be fine to use WASAPI in this scenario. If there is a problem we need to fix it not work around it.