UR interfaces audio drop outs (follow-up thread)

Steinberg Hardware UR Series
1

Hi all,

Update Dec 28, 2017: as a result of these ongoing discussions, we have released a new Yamaha Steinberg USB driver V1.10.0 for Windows. Please make sure to use that driver version!
Details can be found in my post here

Issue
The UR interfaces can suffer from audio drop outs on certain systems.

Possible Solutions
Update the Yamaha Steinberg USB Driver to the latest version. The driver is compatible with all UR interfaces.

Increase the ASIO buffer size to see whether this has a positive impact on the overall performance.

Update all component drivers and the operating system to the latest available versions.

Make sure to disable anything that can have a negative effect on real time audio operation:

  • Disable Hyper-Threading if your CPU supports it.
    Disable advanced power-saving and dynamic performance options for your CPU. This usually needs to be done in the BIOS or UEFI of your computer and includes Enhanced Intel SpeedStep (EIST), AMD Cool ā€˜nā€™ Quiet, Intel Turbo Boost, and AMD Turbo CORE.
    Disable C-States in the BIOS/UEFI, if your computerā€™s BIOS/UEFI gives you this option. C-States allow your CPU to sleep when idle, which may interfere with real-time applications such as audio. This option is often called ā€œDisable CPU Idle State for Power Savingā€ in the BIOS/UEFI.
    Disable core parking if applicable
    Disable anything that is not essential to your work at that point: WIFI, Bluetooth, web cams and other components connected or built-in

Especially for the bus powered UR interfaces (UR12, UR22, UR22mkII) the power supply/consumption via the USB port may lead to drop outs.
If you use a desktop system, please use USB ports that are connected to the mainboard directly. Usually, these ports on the back offer a more stable power supply to the connected hardware.
If you have an active USB hub at hand, please connect the UR interface to that USB hub
Try all available USB ports on the system.
Try USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports. Sometimes, the mode can be switched in the UEFI.
Try a USB 2.0 PCIe controller card.
Try a different USB cable! Some users (thanks Draco and Reppiks) had success using a different cable. The shorter, the better. See this post for details.

Some users reported specific mainboards/chipsets are prone to these issues. Some X99 and Z97 based systems (e.g. Asrock boards) seem to be among them. If possible, try a different system for a test run to see whether you get audio drop outs there as well.

Try to avoid using old PCI cards. Some users had success by replacing old PCI cards (e.g. network cards) with modern PCIe based cards.

If you have the chance to use a different graphic card, this is also worth a try.

If none of the above helped to solve the audio drop out issues, please report back here and include all necessary information on your system (best solution would be to include it in your signature):
Operating system
CPU
RAM
Mainboard
Audio interface with driver version

Without this information, we cannot continue with our investigations!

For most customers, the UR interfaces work reliably without drop outs but our intention is to find solutions for our customers that still suffer from these drop outs even after the Yamaha Steinberg USB driver update to version 1.9.8. Unfortunately, with so many components and drivers involved, it not always possible to find a solution right away. So thank you for your patience and your efforts!

Cheers,
Ed

1 Like
2

Hi,


My PC Specs are:

Win10 Pro
i7 4790K
Gtx 970
8Gb DDR3 Ram at 1866mhz
MSi Gaming 3 with Z97 chipset
Steinberg UR 22 interface


I have tried everything. Tweaked some settings in UEFI, did not help. Installed the latest driver. I also tried a high speed shielded usb cable plugged in different usb ports but this did not help either. I tried to lower and increase the buffer sizes, the sample rates but no change in drop-outs. However, when i re-apply the nvidia steinberg profile in Guru3D, the drop-outs disappear for a small amount of time, but they do not stop.
I have also tried to use the interface with my laptop, which is an ASUS Zenbook UX303UB with 8gigs of DDR3 ram, i7 6500U, win10, and a gt940m. I installed the drivers properly, after that i plugged the interface into one of the usb ports and i experienced high amounts of drop-outs instantly! I dont know what else to do. Iā€™m not a product tester, i wanted a working product! I hope you can solve this issue ASAP.

3

Interface : Steinberg UR12
OS : Windows 8.1 64-bit
CPU : AMD A6-6400K
RAM : 4G
Mainboard : ASRock FM2A88M-HD+


Audio Bug:

Recent Yamaha Steinberg USB driver(1.9.8) makes pops and clicks randomly when you play an audio file.

An Easy way to hear these pops and clicks.

  1. Go to Control Panel - Hardware and Sound - Sound - Playback - Advanced.

  2. Press Test Button.

  3. I heard pops and clicks every time. What about you?


    Another Bug :

ā€˜Enable Loopbackā€™ checkbox disappeared when you turn off the PC and turn on the PC.
(If windows ā€˜fast startupā€™ is enabled - itā€™s enabled by default)

Restart makes checkbox appear again.

Turn off ā€˜fast startupā€™ also makes checkbox appear.

These bugs are occurred by version 1.9.5 and later.
So, Iā€™m using 1.9.2 driver now.
Maybe this is related windows 10 compatiblity, I think.
Regression bug? well, you knowā€¦

4

I would be inclined to spend the few dollars and get a powered usb 2.0 hub, then try again.

5

I have a PCi usb 2.0 card which i inserted into my mobo. No change.

6

Hmmmmmā€¦ Not good then. and you disabled All your network interfaces?

7

This sounds like an issue that has been introduced since driver version 1.9.8? Am I right to assume that all is working fine with 1.9.2 again?

8

I have a gaming motherboard, which includes a special LAN driver. (i only use lan, so no wireless drivers or interfaces) I have already removed that LAN driver because it was causing harm to my memory. So now i do not have network interfaces just my single LAN port, which i will not disable due to the requirement of internet access.
There is one thing thatā€™s been bugginā€™ me. When i bought my ur22 interface, things were running great for over a month using the same system iā€™m using now. Then these new windows 10 updates came and drop-outs started. So i changed my audio to my motherboardā€™s realtek hd audio driver and iā€™m experiencing pops and very short drops in audio when i open a program or something that requires cpu power. Although these pops with the realtek are not as bad as with the ur22.
In the meantime i disabled hyper-threading, there were no drops but when i enabled it again it was good. There were no drops so far. Sometimes itā€™s working great sometimes it doesnā€™t lol.

9

I tested again with four versions of driver downloaded from this site.

Tested version :
1.9.2, 1.9.5, 1.9.6, 1.9.8

Result :
Audio ā€˜popsā€™ - 1.9.8
ā€˜Enable Loopbackā€™ Checkbox Disappearing - 1.9.6, 1.9.8

I didnā€™t do hours of testing, but 1.9.2 and 1.9.5 are fine on my system now.
Its(UR12) audio doesnā€™t drop out totally. It just pops randomly and occasionally.
You canā€™t notice this easily if you listen to regular music.
A quick and easy method to test this is a clicking ā€˜Testā€™ button several times as I described above.

10

I do not have a UR interface (I actually have a Yamaha AG03, but it uses the same Steinberg driver) and by now Iā€™ve been waiting since Monday to hear back from Yamaha support. I asked where Iā€™m supposed to report driver/hardware issues.

After many hours of testing and trying so many combinations, I have found the putting load on the GPU and pushing it to high-power state fixes the drop-outs. Doing anything on the CPU (C-states and so on) does not seem to help.

Example: running a GPU-accelerated video in Media Player Classic (non-GPU accelerated video does not work!), running a GPU benchmark or just using the interface while playing a game. No cuts.

I have the same GPU someone mentioned above (a GTX 970), which might or might not be related. I submitted a bug report to Nvidia and also contacted the cardā€™s manufacturer and the motherboard manufacturer (Gigabyte). Gigabyte thinks I have faulty graphics card; Zotac, who makes the graphics card, thinks it might be a motherboard or CPU issue, since the card is perfect under loadā€¦

I think itā€™s a driver issue (Yamaha Steinberg or Nvidia, I donā€™t know, maybe even Windows 10) or possibly even a GPU design problem. I tried a different PCIe slot ā€“ no difference. Then I replaced the card with a GTX 660 and could not reproduce the issue, but the GTX 660 runs at a higher idle clock than the 9xx series. Using the basic Microsoft video driver also at least makes it harder to get any drop-outs (I tried of a while and couldnā€™t notice any). Unfortunately, my CPU (i7 5820k) does not have integrated graphics, so I canā€™t test with that.

I have a video showing the drops in the audio disappearing with a high GPU clock and I can provide a link to it in private if itā€™s helpful to the driver team.

11

Hi all,

Now with my main PC i can use the UR22 since there are no drops. When i run the DPC Latency Check program, everything is below the green zone. I have disabled all the hdmi devices and other sound in/outputs, because some of them were turned on because of the clean installation of the new nvidia driver. I have also replaced the factory usb 2.0 cable with a shorter one.
When iā€™m using the UR22 with my asus zenbook, the drops are happening. With the latency checker i get results in the red zone.

12

I have a 5960X and 2x GTX 980 GPUā€™s. This problem seems to be alleviated for the most part for me when I disable SLI, but enabling SLI brings back the problem. When SLI is enabled it also seems that moving the mouse erratically seems to make the issue worse as well (utilizing a different USB ports). For now Iā€™ve disabled SLI but I shouldnā€™t have to in order for an audio interface to work properly.

13

Same here ā€“ moving the mouse randomly is the easiest way to make the problem show itself (of course, it also does with just any normal usage). Did you try to place load on the GPUs (benchmark, games or hardware-accelerated video) to see if the problem disappears like it does for me?

14

I re-enabled SLI for this bit of ā€œtestingā€. I watched Netflix through Chrome and it was an audio dropout nightmare, but when I loaded up Saints Row IV using max settings at 3440x1440 resolution, the dropouts seemed to go away, all the while Netflix was still playing on a secondary monitor; this time, no dropouts.

This is a rather odd issue.

15

I tried in my system and Netflix on Chrome does not affect the power state of the GPU, even with hardware acceleration enabled. It still runs in P8 state at 135 Mhz, so I do believe we are on the same boat, since with actual load on your GPUs (the game), the problem disappears. FYI, I check the P-state with Nvidia Inspector.

If you run a MP4 file on Media Player Classic with K-Lite Codecs youā€™ll get the LAV video decoder, which you can accelerate with CUVID. This makes the GPU (or my GPU, at least) instantly go into P2 state (with 2-3% usage) and all drop-outs disappear. This is about the least intrusive way I have found to ā€œfixā€ the problem without any actual load on the system.

This is a very odd issue, Iā€™d say. Load is supposed to make this kind of problem worse, not fix it altogether.

16

I would like to add, with SLI enabled, the problem seems to be rare with a single monitor, dual monitors makes it a common occurrence, but when I add a third monitor its just absolutely unbearable. Again, adding load to the GPUā€™s (such as a video game) seems to solve the issue as far as I can see.

17

Just goy my UR12 today, and, yeah, same issue as described hereā€¦ here are my PC specs:

Windows 10 64-bit
Intel Xeon E3-1230 v3 CPU
8 GB DDR3 Ram @ 800 MHz
ASUS Z87-K Mainboard
Steinberg UR12 audio interface with the Yamaha driver version 1.9.8

Changing the buffer size doesnā€™t change anything. Plugging in the audio interface to the rear USB ports seems to have a slight improvement over plugging in into the front USB ports, although that could be a placebo effect. The PC is running in high performance energy mode when launching the DAW. I also tried to change the USB power saving settings in the Windows energy options, but that had no effect.

The weird thing is, when i get the audio dropouts, the CPU load isnā€™t even high or anything. I had dropouts with 1% CPU load in the Windows task manager. Really weird. I havenā€™t tried any of the BIOS/UEFI solutions though, because, frankly, i donā€™t want to change that every time i want to make music, because my computer is also there for every day tasks.

18

I just tried the UR12 on my laptop, and i donā€™t seem to get audio drop outs there.

The system specs of the laptop are:

Windows 10 64-bit
Intel Core i3-4010U
4 GB DDR3 Ram @ 800 MHz
Lenovo Lancer 5A2 Mainboard
Steinberg UR12 audio interface with Yamaha driver version 1.9.8

So, depending on the hardware, it seems.

19

Hi all,


Iā€™m getting drops again with both my main computer and my laptop. Iā€™m either selling or destroying my UR22 because itā€™s not working properly and i can not return it. A friend of mine has a focusrite interface, they had a similar problem. Drop-outs with AMD systems. Guess what? Focusrite FIXED IT within a couple of days. We are waiting for over A YEAR and still nothing!

20

Just tried the ā€œtry another cableā€ solution. No effect. Would have been surprising if it would have had anyway though.

Stupid question: Is it possible to power the UR12 via the USB power plug, and connect it via the USB port to the computer? Maybe it IS a power problem, and can be bypassed that way. Has anyone tried that?

Edit: And another failureā€¦ tried to power the UR12 via the USB power output, but it changed nothing. Still getting audio drop outs. So, looks like it isnā€™t a power thing either. Oh well, i give up for tonight.