Cubase 11 Pro suddenly stopped my Windows system audio from working

I have always been able to get audio out of both Cubase and other programs on Windows at the same time (e.g. I can play back my project in Cubase whilst watching a YouTube video at the same time).

Then, today, it stopped working. Now, I can only play audio from Windows programs until I boot up Cubase, then only Cubase will work with audio until I restart my system (shutting Cubase down does not restore my Windows audio).

First up; tech:

I’m running the latest Cubase 11 Pro on the latest Windows 11 build. All sound is routed through the Steinberg UR242 Interface.

All drivers for everything are up to date.

Solutions:

First up, ticking “Release Driver when application is in the background” does not work!

Secondly; nor does Control Panel > Hardware & Sound > Manage Audio Devices > Playback > Steinberg UR242 > Advanced and then unticking Allow Applications to take exclusive control of this device:

I have tried both the above in every combination (just in case!) and it has made no difference.

I also reinstalled both the UR242 driver and Cubase 11 Pro today too, just in case - and that made no difference!

Before it stopped working, I was experimenting with the Control Room (I’d never used it before), so perhaps there is a setting there that triggered it?

I did turn the Control Room off, to see if that worked, but that didn’t restore the dual sound; no matter what I’ve tried, I can no longer listen to any Windows audio after I’ve launched Cubase, until I restart my machine.

If anyone can help I’d be most grateful - it’s doing my nut in!

P.S. Here are a few screenshots of some settings that might have some bearing on it, to those who know what they’re looking for!

Make sure everything is set up to work at the same sampling rate.
Disable anything that is NOT the soundcard from the playback windows setting (if you don’t need it)

Sounds like it gets lost after releasing Cubase.
-jmo

Thanks for that. Unfortunately, that didn’t work (I removed all but the UR242 from my PC’s output options, but Cubase still blocked all other programs from using audio, even after I closed Cubase).

Try opening a stand alone synth or something and see if it can output audio to the UR. If that works, then you know it’s in Cubase, if not, you know it isn’t Cubase, that will help to narrow down the source of the problem.

Thanks for that. Yes, Cubase works fine, it outputs sound to the UR242 without problem.

The problem is that the rest of my Windows system - i.e. any other programs, apps or system sounds - will then have no sound until I reboot.

I.E. There will be no sound from VLC player, Spotify, YouTube, etc (YouTube will no longer even play videos, it just has a spinning wheel and a message that I should restart my system if playback doesn’t work).

Worse; even after I shut down Cubase, my Windows system won’t play any sound, until I restart.

Once I restart, my system will have sound and work fine (e.g. I can play YouTube videos), until I start Cubase. Then I’ll only have sound in Cubase until I reboot my system.

Weird because I have, on the laptop, the built in audio, and an iRig and I can select the iRig as the audio output from anything, even when Cubase is running, and in addition, I do NOT have the release checkbox checked.

Maybe also the “direct monitoring” checkbox.

Sounds like a Windows 11 thing, but the fact that mine is working backwards is weird. Just for the sake of it, could you try and uncheck that checkbox and reboot, and see what happens?

Then its a mater of disabling all the devices but the UR. Unless someone has something easier to try first.

Thanks again for your ongoing help! I managed to solve it:

The problem was the new Yamaha UR242 Driver (version 2.1.1). I uninstalled it, shut my PC down, turned off the UR242, unplugged the USB, rebooted, installed version 2.0.4, plugged the UR242 USB back in and turned it on and… it worked fine!

(using the above process, I actually tried version 2.0.3 first, which worked, then 2.0.4, which worked, then 2.1.1 which didn’t work, so went back to 2.0.4)

I really should have thought that perhaps the latest drivers were causing the problem, but it was just strange that it was working then all of a sudden stopped working. I guess playing with the various settings in Cubase was what caused the bug to glitch up. And then after that it wouldn’t un-glitch!

So a reminder to myself (and anyone reading!), always start with a Driver Rollback and/or Update to see if that solves the problem, before deep diving into settings!

Cheers for your help!

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