This is a driver “feature”.
The Steinberg driver does not permit you to change the channels sample-rate from Windows audio settings. You can only do that from the driver pop-up. It creates separate sets of channels for each of the available sample-rates. If you open device manager and show hidden peripherals, under audio inputs and outputs, you’ll see duplicates for every channels. The ones that are not grayed out correspond to the sample-rate currently in use, and the ones that are grayed out correspond to other sample-rates and are “not connected”. When you change the sample rate through the driver or when you switch between programs that use different sample-rates, Windows has to shut down the channels and load the appropriate set corresponding to the sample-rate, thus causing the audio to drop out for several seconds. This is literally like having multiple interfaces that work with only one different sample-rate each, but you have only one USB port, and have to unplug an interface to replace with another.
That kind of driver behavior is indeed the worst you can encounter.
Presonus recently updated their drivers and switched to that too, and it is absolutely nefarious. I had to revert back to a previous version which work completely trouble-free.
I’m thinking about making a new topic to disclose the problem. Because this is wide-spread.