Is Cubase Stealing My Soundcard?

Hi All,
I’ve been having a sound problem that occurs about once every 2 weeks or so. It won’t occur until I turn my computer on at the beginning of the day. When the problem occurs, everything boots up fine but I’ll have no sound … EXCEPT in Cubase!
I can check my driver and sound routing and everything seems ok and the system device manager says everything is in working order. In this case, is Cubase somehow not releasing my soundcard driver? I’ve checked and unchecked the box that says “release driver when application is in background” and still no result. When this issue happens, I have to restore my computer to the day before and then everything will work fine. Anyone have any thoughts on this?
Thanks in advance.

Will

Cubase no swiping!
Cubase no swiping!
Cubase no swiping!

Oh man… :laughing:

If you are getting no sound on a fresh boot before you launch Cubase, then Cubase isn’t at fault. It’s more likely that Windows is at fault.

It may be that your interface’s driver isn’t initializing properly when you boot into Windows.
When you launch Cubase, however, it will reinitialize the interface itself using the ASIO driver (vs Windows’ WDM driver).

The “release driver when application is in background” is more of a “release exclusive hold on the hardware” type thing (since only one driver can have control over a piece of hardware at a time).

If my interface’s driver isn’t initializing properly, Windows still thinks it is. It’s just strange that Cubase is the only thing producing sound in this condition. Rebooting doesn’t clear up the problem. Only restoring to an earlier date will.

Just sounds like you have Windows system sounds turned off.

I don’t ever have any system sounds active, haven’t for yrs, just cubase & Wavelab.

If that’s not what you mean then…?

My soundcard is used in all my computer functions. The reason escapes me why it works for everything one day and then just Cubase the next.

This may be approaching OT, but there IS one advantage to leaving the system sound on - so you can hear the BIOS beeps when debugging a system crash.

How do I know this? :blush: :smiling_imp: :laughing:

BIOS error codes are transmitted from the onboard system speaker. Besides, disabling system sounds disables the sound output from Windows. When your BIOS gives error codes, it hasn’t loaded Windows yet.

OK then, thanks Strophoid. Good to know the computer will be able to tell me I’ve quaggled something just as easily with the Windows sound system active as not. Yes, since you asked, I had a wonderful weekend looking at the inside of my computer, thank you very much! :laughing:

What’s a system crash ? :laughing:

It’s what happens at 2AM when you’re changing out RAM and a graphics card, not having been inside a computer in recent memory. And then the antistatic wrist strap falls onto the motherboard, and the budgie swoops in and lands on the psu.

And then the beeps. Don’t forget the beeps.

It’s in the urban dictionary, you know! :smiley:

Finally figured this out.