Tascam driver issue ?

[mark skinner]

I've been using a Tascam US 2x2HR interface (with an asio driver from the Tascam site) in CbB without issues. Sonar on the same desktop  pc has been a nightmare , with all kinds of strange problems. I decided to finish the project in CbB while it is still available. 

Iv'e set up a laptop to record an upright bass , so my friend doesn't have to haul it to my place. Downloaded the driver to use the same interface and got a warning about "generic low latency driver" having problems in Sonar. Everything I've searched stated it was a true asio driver. I didn't get the pop up on my desk top. I'm wondering now if the driver has been my issue using the new Sonar. I ran the project in Sonar after changing the driver to Wasapi shared/exclusive and WDM/KS without major playback issues. WDM was the smoothest. 

So .. I'm wondering if Sonar can detect a bad true asio driver and detect it as a problamatic generic one.

Is there a way to detect a problamatic driver before installing it. (wrapped , etc ..    Thanks ..mark

[msmcleod]

The "generic low latency driver" is an aggregate driver - i.e. it's a wrapper around the WDM driver.   It may behave like an ASIO driver, but it's talking to the WDM driver rather than the audio interface hardware directly.

Sonar enumerates the drivers and their capabilities by opening each driver and determining the modes that are supported.  This is done on start up of the application.

When it opens the generic driver,  the driver opens the device (and all other devices) using WDM.  It then closes the driver in order to open the next ASIO device.

The problem arises when, after closing the driver,  and the driver doesn't let go of the WDM driver properly.   You then get issues when opening the real ASIO device, as it may be using a different bit/sample rate than the one it's trying to use in ASIO,  and although the drivers are separate, it's still just the one audio interface - e.g. it can't be at 16 bit/44.1K and 24 bit/48K at the same time.

ASIO4ALL certainly is designed to be this way - i.e. when closed, it stays alive in the system tray with the WDM drivers open.

The generic low latency driver (which I believe is a Steinberg device?) should behave more gracefully, however it's still at the mercy of how well the WDM drivers were written.

The easiest thing is just not to use wrapper drivers, and stick to the manufacturer's genuine ASIO drivers.

[mark skinner]

4 hours ago, msmcleod said:

The easiest thing is just not to use wrapper drivers, and stick to the manufacturer's genuine ASIO drivers.

Thanks @msmcleod for the explanation.

  That's where the problem popped up. I thought I "was" using the manufacturers genuine ASIO driver. Maybe there is another ASIO driver on my laptop that got chosen instead of the one from Tascam I had just downloaded. ??  Not sure how to check for all the drivers installed.  I'll Google it .

I deleted the driver and downloaded it again .  ASIO then showed up again as an option , although there was no reference to Tascam US . Got the same toast message about a generic driver. Location was C/windows system 32.  I guess I'll stick to Wasapi ...     Thanks  ..   ms

Edited yesterday at 07:45 PM by mark skinner

[David Baay]

8 hours ago, mark skinner said:

I thought I "was" using the manufacturers genuine ASIO driver. Maybe there is another ASIO driver on my laptop that got chosen instead of the one from Tascam I had just downloaded. ??

Yes, that Generic Low Latency ASIO Driver is a Steinberg thing - usually installed with Cubase, but I think some other audio softwares leverage it as well. As Mark said it's that 'aggregate driver' tying up your dedicated Tascam interface driver when it's enumerated on startup that causes the problem. The Steinberg driver is a known cause  of issues in Sonar for this reason and needs to be uninstalled. I've never had it, but I assume that can be done through Windows Applications and Features. If not you can just remove its key from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ASIO

[Bass Guitar]

Only Sonar has this problem with oddball drivers. It’s just the weird way they designed the audio engine. 
 

I say this because I now use a bunch of different Daw’s. One of them is Cubase which yes installed the generic audio driver. So does any Magix software like Sound Forge or Vegas. 
 

So I have those lurking in the background and for about 4 months Im using about 5 different Daw’s and they all had no problems recognizing either my SS1, Zoom L8  or my Motu M4 once set up.  
One day I needed to open the new Sonar to export a project and the data and it said I had no Audio device. ??. I had to go into preferences and set up ASIO and Choose my interface. It had defaulted to my on board system. 
But the project was silent. Ok I know that one and yes the Master bus was set to None. 
I finally got everything done and closed. 

A few days later I get the same bull——t 

Being a savvy Sonar operator I checked Sync and Caching and there it was ! the generic driver. 
 

So my conclusion is only Sonar barfs on these otherwise harmless drivers the other Daw’s ignored them. 

 

 

[David Baay]

10 hours ago, Bass Guitar said:

So my conclusion is only Sonar barfs on these otherwise harmless drivers

My conclusion is that only Sonar has a sophisticated enough start-up process to expose a phony ASIO driver. 😁

[Noel Borthwick]

13 hours ago, Bass Guitar said:

Only Sonar has this problem with oddball drivers. It’s just the weird way they designed the audio engine. 
 

I say this because I now use a bunch of different Daw’s. One of them is Cubase which yes installed the generic audio driver. So does any Magix software like Sound Forge or Vegas. 
 

So I have those lurking in the background and for about 4 months Im using about 5 different Daw’s and they all had no problems recognizing either my SS1, Zoom L8  or my Motu M4 once set up.  
One day I needed to open the new Sonar to export a project and the data and it said I had no Audio device. ??. I had to go into preferences and set up ASIO and Choose my interface. It had defaulted to my on board system. 
But the project was silent. Ok I know that one and yes the Master bus was set to None. 
I finally got everything done and closed. 

A few days later I get the same bull——t 

Being a savvy Sonar operator I checked Sync and Caching and there it was ! the generic driver. 
 

So my conclusion is only Sonar barfs on these otherwise harmless drivers the other Daw’s ignored them. 

 

 

So, because a faulty driver takes down the app its the apps fault?
Would you prefer we invest our precious time in building useful features or rewriting our driver stack to avoid problems with broken drivers?
Oh, and loading drivers has absolutely nothing to do with the "audio engine". It's the application initialization that loads and checks audio drivers that actually runs into this issue.

[mark skinner]

OK , I found and deleted the Steinberg driver. It then loaded a Realtec HD ASIO driver and I got the same message. I'm not sure whether to delete it or not . Thoughts ??   

I normally don't have an interface hooked up to the laptop , just setting it up for mobile recording that rarely happens. I was able to get it working using WDM/KS.  Unless something comes up , I'll use this workaround for now.    Thanks ..   mark