Steinberg ASIO driver causes Sonar to hang forever

[Egil Hansen]

I redeemed a VST package from Steinberg, that force installed the Steinberg ASIO drivers.....

Upon next time opening Sonar (paid version, and latest) then the whole interface is just hanging and the cursor is just spinning..... 

Seriously guys.....  I have defended and up talked you guys for years, now i'm starting to regret it  I did not change my default driver, either should you! And even if you do (just by yourself) at least handle it better!!!

[JonD]

Have you tried to uninstall the Steinberg drivers?  

If it's not listed under programs, then you'll have to go into the registry editor and delete the Steinberg drivers from there.  

[Bristol_Jonesey]

1 hour ago, Egil Hansen said:

I redeemed a VST package from Steinberg, that force installed the Steinberg ASIO drivers.....

Upon next time opening Sonar (paid version, and latest) then the whole interface is just hanging and the cursor is just spinning..... 

Seriously guys.....  I have defended and up talked you guys for years, now i'm starting to regret it  I did not change my default driver, either should you! And even if you do (just by yourself) at least handle it better!!!

You're blaming Cakewalk because Steinberg installed their driver over yours?

Way to go pal. 🤣

[57Gregy]

This is not new information.

[Chaps]

It's been a known issue for years no matter who you want to blame and it has caused problems for many people, including myself. Use REGEDIT to open the registry (many sources suggest backing it up first if you want to be extra careful) and go to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ASIO and remove the Steinberg low-latency ASIO driver, Steinberg generic ASIO, or whatever it's called, and reboot. Problem solved. The only Steinberg ASIO driver that works with Cakewalk is the Yamaha Steinberg USB ASIO driver. It just takes a few minutes, most of which is reboot time. Every time I get new software from Steinberg I have to repeat the process. Annoying, yes, but not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things.

[Bass Guitar]

Only Sonar has this issue. I had at least 6 other Daw’s installed and all used my Interface no problem once I selected it. 

Sonar is the only one that would screw up. And this was because I own Cubase and it had harmlessly installed a driver it kindly installed for folks who can’t afford interfaces. Don’t blame Steinberg. Sonars Audio system has always been hyper sensitive. 
The thousands of posts on the topic are proof. 
 

[Jeremy Oakes]

6 hours ago, Bass Guitar said:

Only Sonar has this issue. I had at least 6 other Daw’s installed and all used my Interface no problem once I selected it. 

Sonar is the only one that would screw up. And this was because I own Cubase and it had harmlessly installed a driver it kindly installed for folks who can’t afford interfaces. Don’t blame Steinberg. Sonars Audio system has always been hyper sensitive. 
The thousands of posts on the topic are proof. 
 

I do blame those companies that install their own drivers without asking. Stand up Steinberg, Image Line, Magix etc.

But so what ? Just go into Preferences and change to your favourite driver again.

J

[Chaps]

40 minutes ago, Jeremy Oakes said:

I do blame those companies that install their own drivers without asking. Stand up Steinberg, Image Line, Magix etc.

But so what ? Just go into Preferences and change to your favourite driver again.

I wish it were that simple, but in my experience (had to do it again today after updating a Steinberg plugin) the Steinberg generic ASIO driver has to be removed from the registry, as explained above, or it will cause conflicts in Cakewalk audio. Doesn't make any difference if it shows in Sonar as a driver or is not selected. Google 'how to remove Steinberg generic ASIO driver' and you will see this problem, and its solution, going back many years. Maybe someday this won't be a problem but right now it is. And if the driver is removed from the registry right after it is installed by Steinberg you don't even have to reboot. Even if you have a Steinberg Audio Interface, like me, you still have to remove the generic Steinberg USB ASIO driver and install the Yamaha Steinberg USB ASIO driver from their website, which can be downloaded separately or as part of their Tools package.

[Noel Borthwick]

We don’t support these combo ASIO driver wrappers for this reason. We infact display a message saying its not supported.
Depending on what other ASIO devices you have, It interferes with how drivers are enumerated when the app starts up, leading to a feedback loop of sample rate change notifications.
Someday I plan to change our ASIO startup to only load/enumerate specific user selected drivers that might alleviate problems with drivers that cause side effects like this.

[Jeremy Oakes]

5 hours ago, Chaps said:

I wish it were that simple, but in my experience (had to do it again today after updating a Steinberg plugin) the Steinberg generic ASIO driver has to be removed from the registry, as explained above, or it will cause conflicts in Cakewalk audio. Doesn't make any difference if it shows in Sonar as a driver or is not selected. Google 'how to remove Steinberg generic ASIO driver' and you will see this problem, and its solution, going back many years. Maybe someday this won't be a problem but right now it is. And if the driver is removed from the registry right after it is installed by Steinberg you don't even have to reboot. Even if you have a Steinberg Audio Interface, like me, you still have to remove the generic Steinberg USB ASIO driver and install the Yamaha Steinberg USB ASIO driver from their website, which can be downloaded separately or as part of their Tools package.

Yes It is simple. Use Sonar Preferences, it does work. But then I don't install Steinberg products. Nor Magix. And yes, I know how to Google, thanks. I clean the Asio part of the Registry manually every so often. 

FYI I believe its a Windows "issue" (I'm not a computor expert by any means so don't quote me......). AFAIA Sonar reads what is included in the Registry.

But : my GT100 multi pedal also installs its own Asio driver with a Registry entry, but it doesn't interfere with Sonar. Same for the Soundcraft MTK22 driver. Same for the Spark Asio driver. Same for my old f/w Saffire Asio driver etc etc. If those products are not turned on at boot up, (therefore not recognised by Windows),  then they don't show up. Only my Focusrite Asio driver does. Your problem is that you're using a Steingberg product. Ouch !

And I take back what I said about Image Line - there is now an advanced option in their installer to NOT install their so called Low Latency Asio Driver. If only the others did the same life would be great ................

YMMV

J

Edited Sunday at 02:07 PM by Jeremy Oakes

[Bass Guitar]

45 minutes ago, Jeremy Oakes said:

But : my GT100 multi pedal also installs its own Asio driver with a Registry entry, but it doesn't interfere with Sonar. Same for the Soundcraft MTK22 driver. Same for the Spark Asio driver. Same for my old f/w Saffire Asio driver etc etc. If those products are not turned on at boot up, (therefore not recognised by Windows),  then they don't show up. Only my Focusrite Asio driver does.

Those I think are all proper( kind of)  ASIO drivers. For sure the Soundcraft driver is and I  own that. Those are not a problem for Sonar.  As you say Sonar will grab the device that was turned on and booted up with windows. You can even swap It  out with Sonar open but no project loaded, Sonar will complain when you turn off the first interface, then ask you if your want to use the one you just turned on.  Done this hundreds of times.  

It is as Noel said the "Generic Wrappers" that will screw up on loading because they are running in the background I guess.   Seems Steinberg  and Magix and Presonus?  install them as a convenience for users who don't own interfaces. Magix installer will ask you. Cubase installer doesn't. Cubase and a few other daw's  install a lot of Bloatware. I had to re install Windows to clean my computer up.  

[Noel Borthwick]

Its not that we select the device. Sonar enumerates all ASIO devices and these devices cause problems simply as part of being enumerated.
Its unfortunately how these wrapper devices work. I think the driver vendors have coded them only testing it with apps like Cubase so never see the problems. That is really the root problem here. The only solution is to not use them for now.

[Amberwolf]

Given the response to my last thoughts I posted, I'm not sure it's good idea to even reply, but I'll put it out there:

 

I don't know what drivers expose or what apps can actually see internally....is there a way to code Sonar to tell what the audio driver actually is, and simply "firewall" out all the known problem drivers, so that when Sonar is about to enumerate / test / etc all the drivers, it simply ignores any that are in the problem list.    The list could be kept in the aud.Ini file instead of being hard-coded so that if a user actually has to use or test one of them for some reason, that line could be commented out. 

 

I'm sure someone has already thought of and discarded this idea, but in case not....

 

(puts firesuit on)