I take that back even with that option enabled is still affecting other applications. Reaper and Reason don’t have any of this problems.
not sure why that matters as you are leaving cubase anyway …because of the ‘floating menu bar’ - that you can’t possibly live with.
or would you like some help getting to the bottom of the issue - if so best start a new thread, and give more details and help will be forthcoming 
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No, you should not follow the manual for this ! 
It asks to enable Release Driver, but this setting should always be kept disabled. I have even made a guide that explains the reasons behind it because a lot of people get confused by what the user manual says. I don’t understand why this setting still wasn’t removed from Cubase after all this time, it’s just another remaining of the past and it has absolutely no use by now. Other DAWs don’t have such setting, and other Audio Interface manufacturers even recommend to disable Exclusive Mode in Windows, instead Steinberg just keep doing the opposite and it is totally counter-productive…
@isdavid If you want to avoid audio issues please follow the following guide :
PS : The damn “floating bar” can be reduced by simply clicking the bottom right corner of your screen to invoke the desktop…
And, Cubase does this because it gives the user the possibility to load and work on multiple Projects at once, and not a lot of DAW can do that. The “immovable bar” is the main Cubase window and this is where it displays the different Menus like File, Edit, etc, exactly the same it does on MAC. And can the Menus be moved on a MAC ? Not at all, actually I’ve never seen a single MAC user complaining about this.
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I don’t want to pollute the other thread but ASIO interface drivers don’t have to expose a WDM driver to the OS. My RME cards are set not to - meaning only ASIO applications can access the card. Windows doesn’t see it as an audio output at all. It means that there is no ‘Exclusive Mode’ to disable.
Obviously ‘release driver’ may not fix this specific problem but without knowing how the system is set up and what hardware/drivers are being used then the ‘fix’ it may be more (or less) complicated.
so many variables
Are you telling me you are using a different device / pair of speakers to listen to Windows audio ? What’s the interest ? ASIO and WDM are totaly independent, only the end signals mix together directly in the device DSP, they do not interfere with each other. Anyways, my guide is meant for the 95% of people that do no use expensive professional-grade RME hardware, so it remains relevant for most of us
I tend not to use it for watching youtube and stuff like that - although in that rare instance it actually uses the audio over a HDMI output to one of the (video) monitors - Strictly speaking this isn’t an audio device, it’s part of the NVDIA chipset.
Why would I want random Windows sounds routing to your main (audio) Monitors - and exposing that extra WDM device still takes (minuscule) CPU cycles, why do it if you don’t need to ?
Only application that I have that isn’t ASIO is Revoice Pro - but that doesn’t get used standalone very often.
Yes it may be ‘relevant’ for most but it’s not always the optimal way to set up a DAW (IMO!)
So this is by choice? On my Win10 machine I have Windows set up to use an otherwise unused pair of SPDIF on my RME interface. I think it’s awesome to have windows audio on separate channels in Total Mix.
I know nothing about your setup, but my Windows machine certainly does not produce random sounds! 
Would you say those CPU cycles eaten up is noticeable?
Nah. Pro-sumer.
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I’ve never found I needed it - but if I did it would be the work of seconds to enable that. It doesn’t give me any sense of awe either way
Strictly speaking neither does mine - it was a figure of speech. Personally I can see zero reason for any audio to come out of my audio interface, other than that from the ASIO audio app I’m using. I don’t want ANY Windows (WDM) sounds. Others might.
Of course not, it would be difficult to tell/measure.
I don’t know if you’ve read the RME manuals (or at least the MadiFX one) - they advise you to, very specifically, enable only the WDM ports you need - they go on to say if you activated all 98 stereo devices it would (from the manual)
probably freeze your computer
and
Reduce the number of WDM devices to the ones really needed to improve performance of the
operating system.
That implies to me that the overhead of enabling the WDM channels is far, far greater than the equivalent CPU load of the ASIO driver, which happily gives me 98 stereo channels without blinking. It’s NOT simply summing in the “DSP” (whatever that means ). Exactly how much more CPU overhead per channel I don’t know - and TBH, don’t care
We know that WDM drivers are actually doing a realtime sample rate convert to match the system setting - or how complex clocking the audio when it has to sync that from an external source and an internal WDM stream, or how WDM copes with buffers of 32 samples blah blah blah.
In summary - I could enable WDM channels but why ? I leave WDM disabled and my system works great - If you find it awesome to run in a hybrid ASIO/WDM mode then great 
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Any update on this?
Has there been an official response?
I don’t know… it really doesn’t bother me much at all these days. I use one 3440x1440 main screen with the project window / timeline on it as well as 3 of the 4 mixers (Nuendo), and then a 1920x1200 on my left that has meters and video on it, one mixer, Media Bay etc. Not all of the above at once but in various different workspace setups.
I don’t really have a big problem with the menu bar at all. Really the only thing about window management that is somewhat annoying at times is focus… But the menu bar doesn’t bother me at all. If I want to focus something else I typically just focus it or I hide everything with the key command and then focus what I want.
What’s the actual practical problem with the floating menu bar? I mean I can see that it’s there, but what’s the problem with it being there?
It also doesn’t work with applications like TidyTabs
See my screenshot just before your post - the menu is all white. It should be greyed out with visible text. And this is my only problem with it.
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