Hello!
Is there any way to setup Control Room for 2 different drivers/audio devices?
I’m using a Behringer UMC202HD interface for my main monitors, but I’d like to switch to a pair of generic low cost monitors that are connected directly to the headphone jack of my notebook. I can’t seem to find a way to configure different outputs from different audio devices.
Is that possible?
Thanks in advance!
You could look at creating an aggregate device. See e.g. Aggregate Audio Devices and Drivers for PC and Mac | Sweetwater
Personally wouldn’t go there as I feel there’s enough that can go wrong with drivers etc. already.
Presume you have phones connected to the phones output of the Behringer? An alternative could be to get a cheap passive switcher to go between phones and generic speakers.
It’s possible to aggregate interfaces in the advanced mode of ASIO4ALL, but it varies for people how well it works (no harm in trying it.). In my experience it’s OK, but one MUST be willing to take the time, and have the patience to tweak and tune it for a given system. In a few cases, it’s actually been better for me than the native ASIO drivers that came with the interface!
What is it? ASIO4ALL is a generic WDM to ASIO bridge. It’s similar to the generic ASIO driver that ships with Steinberg products, but has a lot more user configurable options, including the ability to aggregate multiple WDM devices into the ASIO backend.
Keep in mind that two devices each using their own sample clocks will ‘drift apart’ over time. If they need to be in perfect sync then you’re out of luck unless you have some way to force the two interface to share a common sample clock (perhaps via word-clock or SPDIF ports if your interfaces have those options).
Other options are to use IP networking methods. In theory, depending on how you route streams, these methods shouldn’t suffer as much from ‘time drift’ since they have various forms of jitter control coded into them, but they might introduce some extra latency depending on your system. Yes, it’s still better if you have some way to force both audio interfaces to share a common sample clock.
Will an IP link work for you? Like ASIO4ALL, the only way to know for sure is to simply try it on your particular rig.
ASIO Link Pro (a free utility now, no nags or limits) ‘might’ have a way on your system to run more than one instance (one for each audio interface) on a single machine and thus use networking protocols over the localhost. Grab ASIO Link Pro and read the docs carefully (they will be in the home directory of where the utility gets installed on your PC).
If you can get multiple instances pointing to the two different audio-interfaces, then you can route streams between the instances via IP (use an efficient localhost, usually something like 127.0.0.1, address as opposed to one that goes through your ethernet or WAN router).
If you can run the interfaces on two different PCs, and have a good ethernet connection between the machines then ASIO Link Pro can definitely be a solid option.
Note, ASIO Link Pro is worth having a look at either way, as it allows you to route any ASIO stream anywhere you like in the ASIO sound matrix. It also provides virtual cable drivers to route WDM apps into or out of the ASIO realm (I.E. Route Skype into Cubase and vice verse). There’s a bit of a learning curve in mastering how everything works in multi-client mode, but it’s well worth it to figure it out! [Concept: Enable the ASIO loopback rack; then, realize that each ASIO app gets a fresh instance in the windows task bar/system tray when launched. Route ‘outputs’ to the device through the main asiolinktool.exe instance, and do ‘inputs’ through the target app’s icon in the system tray].
Another possibility is to run something like Bidule (A fully functional demo works in stand alone mode, register it for plugin versions and constant access to support, devkits, and latest compiles/revisions) or MiniHost (A free minimal VST host). Connect the alternate VST host directly to your secondary sound-device, and use instances of Reastream (A VST 2 plugin that can stream audio/midi via IP protocols) to get a connection into or out of Cubase.
Yet another possibility is something called Jack2 (also free). This is a port from the unix world that is similar in concept to ASIO Link Pro. It can do many of the same things but in my experience thus far it’s not quite as robust (features/speed/stability) and is harder to understand and get installed/set-up.