Cubase audio stops working when any other audio used

Cubase
,
1

Hi All, I hope someone can help!

I’m pulling my hair out trying to get my laptop’s internal soundcard to be able to play audio from Cubase alongside other audio sources at the same time (browser, wave editor, mp3 player etc.)

I have just upgraded to Cubase 10 Elements from Cubase 5. With Cubase 5 I used to be able to flit between Cubase and other audio inputs such as my wave editor, Youtube, VLC player and so on and even play them simultaneously.

Now, when I load Cubase 10 it works fine UNTIL any other audio is played. At that point the audio output from cubase stops, even though the outputs on the mixer clearly show audio is being produced. Even if I close all other audio sources and restart Cubase there is still no sound. I am convinced this is a sound card issue and have reinstalled all of the Realtek HD Drivers and have Realtek Audio Manager installed properly but still the problem persists. I use ASIO4ALL (the Generic Low Latency Driver does not seem to work anyway) and have played with all of the settings in the Studio Setup window (release audio driver when application is in the background), changed the sample rate to match my soundcard but for the life of me I cannot stop the problem from happening over and over again.

It is not going to work if I can only use Cubase on its own as I rely heavily on sampling and using other programs alongside my DAW. Even a Windows notification sound - such as the sound generated when I move the volume slider - seems to stop any audio output from Cubase.

Although I have been producing for a long time I am still a massive noob so I hope what I am doing wrong is obvious to more experienced users. I never had any of these issues before when I used previous versions (VST 32, Cubase 5) and hope that it is something someone will be kind enough to show me how to fix.

I am sure the internal soundcard is not up to much but surely it can handle more than one audio source at once and I am reluctant to have to get an external soundcard if at all possible.

I am using a Dell Inspiron 17 7773

Any help would be much appreciated as since upgrading I have not been able to write a single note and it’s doing my head in!!!

Thanks in advance :slight_smile:

2

Hi and welcome,

Make sure you are not using ASIO driver in the other application. Use other driver type (WDM?) instead in the other application.

3

MME driver is the correct one. I think WDM is gone, Martin, and yes, I know you are Mac so how would you know, right?

4

Hi,

Thank you for correcting me.

5

Hi, I had the same issue and I just saw Steinberg released new tools and driver that fixes this exact issue. From the changelog:

Solved a problem in which launching an application that uses ASIO while audio is playing in
an application that uses WDM would stop playback in the application that uses WDM

6

Yes, the 2.1.2 fixes an issue where the WDM driver would remain stuck into a glitched state if the ASIO driver was loaded when DWM was already streaming audio at the same time. This was only a driver-related bug that appeared in the 2.1.0 version.

But since the original topic is from 2019, there was no such bug at that time, and being able to play audio from multiple applications simultaneously is only a matter of settings.

This is explained in the following guide :
Audio setup Guide for Windows