Problems getting audio in Cubase after switching to UR44

Steinberg Hardware
1

I already reported about this issue in Cubase forum, but then I thought this might be an issue with UR44 driver, so I am replicating it here.

I recently changed my rusty (but still good) M-Audio ProFire 2626 to Steinberg UR44, mainly to be able to upgrade later to Windows 8 or 10. With M-Audio it has never been an issue to listen to an output from external MIDI instruments. As long as I had their outputs included in an input bus I could simply start the song playback and hear what they played.

Not anymore after upgrading to UR44. After trying, failing and swearing I found a workflow that let me hear my external MIDI instruments, but it looks quite ackward. Here’s what I had to do:

  1. Create an audio track for each external MIDI instrument.
  2. Set the instrument output as input for each such track.
  3. Enable monitoring of each such track.

Then if play the song I am able to hear the sound of these instuments. If I mute these audio tracks or disable their monitoring, I don’t hear anything.

Last but not least - sometimes (but only sometimes!) I manage without these extra audio tracks if I just start the UR44 dsp mixer application. Then the sound magically reappears.

Never had this problem with other sound cards.