Unable to load audio driver

Cubase
22

I looks like your machine is pretty messed up!

-what are your specs exactly?

-Do you have everything backed up?
Like all your prefs/settings/presets/documents/projects/samples etc etc

I use Superduper all the time, since forever.
External 2,5" are so cheap these days…
So at least you have your data, in case you need to re-install macOS.

This makes me think, do you run a lot of libraries from external drives?
What kind of drive?
This could make your computer unstable if the external drive is not good.
Also background services like Dropbox/Google Drive/Backblaze are not really good for Cubase or any big DAW projects.

But this should not give you this wierd driver error, this seems system related to me, but what do i know…im not an expert, just experienced.

If you make money from music, i would first do a solid Superduper backup, maybe an extra one as redundancy backup, just in case.
Then, if all else fails, go back to Catalina if possible, or Big Sur, but not Ventura since this is such a different system than Catalina/Intel.
I still have Catalina on my 2019 macbook pro, and it runs fine.
I also have an early 2013 (!!!) maxed out macbook pro, and this ALSO runs fine with Catalina, i use this laptop to do ‘experimental things’ and new plugins, GFX, movies, dropbox, google drive etc etc

let me know if Steinberg can help you with this, they have a service where they remotely access your computer to see whats up, this works really well.
Also, actually calling their office is also a great way to get real help.

23

Hey. Yeah steinberg have been really helpful so far and they did a remote login. Reinstalled cubase, removed preferences, updating everything etc. So far no joy.

You’re right an OS install might be one of the options. I’m not quite ready to download and install 900GB of programs and data though! I gotta finish some projects first (the ones that are still working!). Superduper looks like it might make this reinstall much easier so if I do I’ll quite possibly use that, thank you.

I use no external hdd. Everything is on my internal drive and everything (which cannot be easily re-downloaded from product website) is stored in dropbox. All my work is in dropbox so when I save a project it’s backed up in minutes. I also unsynchronise projects I’m not working on to save space. It works well for me. Although I turn dropbox off usually when working on big projects to save processing power. Perhaps dropbox is the problem! Who knows… I’ll let Steinberg tell me!

I did discover something interesting yesterday which I think could be a good clue:
If I open a problematic cubase project for which I experience this audio driver issue and wait for cubase to say “unable to load audio driver”, and THEN try to play audio from another source it will not work. This includes:

  • In a browser (youtube, soundcloud)
  • In the spotify desktop app
  • VLC media player, apple music player desktop app
  • Finder preview

It will not work in any place. In a browser I get an audio render error. In spotify I get “Cannot play the current song”. Then if I close cubase, I immediately get the sound back in all those places. Bizarre!

Thanks for your input! If we find the problem I’ll post it here of course for others. Although I’m yet to find someone online with the same problem!

25

Hi Hamishcubase, for the Audio you mentioned not working when your cubase is running, go to Studio setup/ Audio System/ Un check the ‘Release driver when application is in background’

I have the same problem my Cubase LE 11 is not reading my Zoom UAC2 driver, I dont know what to do with this but whats funny is the Generic Asio Driver that is running by default is using the in and out line of the Zoom UAC2 and yet it still reports ‘the driver could not be loaded’ hays.

26

what do you mean with this? that if you release the driver in the background, you dont have this problem?
that macOS “steals” the recources in Ventura?
This could be intersting to solve this drama :slight_smile:

this morning i had the same error (could not load driver) with my RME interface…

had to restart my macbook and reset the interface to make it work

27

Hi,
I also suddenly have the same problem:
the audio driver could not be loaded.

And I can’t think of what I might have done wrong. Did’t open Cubase 12 for weeks.

Someone has found any solution to this problem or a clue where to start looking?

I am running Cubase 12 on a desktop PC with plenty of memory and the project I opened is minimal (one audio track).
Using a ZOOM UAC-2 on USB3 which - so far - has always worked.

Can’t think of a problem with the audio interface cause music from internet and from PC does play.

28

Hey there, was this ever resolved? you’ve described to a T my issue on same spec computer running large orchestral library projects. im at a full stop in production now because of it.

29

Hi all, 2026.. just had the exact same issue with a heavy session on my mac. I’m on Cubase 13 on Sequoia… Any updates on fixes of this?