UR interfaces audio drop outs (follow-up thread)

Steinberg Hardware UR Series
101

Bought UR22 mkII because of the low price and have got this issue. In my case drop-outs is really unpredictable and depends on a God’s will I guess. But they are happend when CPU is under big but very short load, for example opening a new tab in Chrome. Also some USB-ports works disgusting with UR22mkII.

Here some of my specs:

List of actions:

  1. USB Driver reinstalled - no effect
  2. USB port changed - smooth effect
  3. BIOS updated - almost no effect
  4. All the stuff about energy saving features is done - no effect
  5. Removed all other USB devices except keyboard/mouse - no effect
102

I tried connecting to a mains powered USB hub, and while initial tests seemed positive, the drop-outs still occur.

I’ll try all available USB 2 ports and see if any of them make any difference and report back. It will take a while though.

103

Cool! No post here, thanx!

So I wouldn’t write a lot, I will just say - I have such problem too.

UPDATE - Too long for moderating. But anyway - finally post here, excuse me.

104

Limit is 3 attachments, but there was another LatencyMon check at 512 samples. All clear. Zero spikes or issues.

The reality when running Cubase though, is that the minimum working rate is 128 samples, which is double the workable, stable rate I had in Win7 and Win8.

This is 100% a Steinberg/Yamaha USB driver problem. 6 months and no fix and no communication or acknowledgement of the issue is not really acceptable at all.

DPC Dec 2016 - 128 samples.PNG
DPC Dec 2016 - 128 samples.PNG971×790 23.2 KB

DPC Dec 2016 - 96 samples.PNG
DPC Dec 2016 - 96 samples.PNG974×789 26 KB

DPC Dec 2016 - 64 samples.PNG
DPC Dec 2016 - 64 samples.PNG973×789 27.8 KB

105

Some news:

I have reinstall Windows, now Win7 SP1 and connect AHCI to my S.M.A.R.T. compatible HDDs. Now it’s working much better. But still there are drop outs which depends on CPU load and also on some unpredictable things.

Is anybody have older versions of installer? Maybe there are major bugs in this etiration?

106

OOOOPSS

There is no x64 USB Drivers. But I installed x64, that’s for sure! what’s wrong?

107

@Inplanto: Don’t check whether the software is 64 bit. Go into your Windows Device Manager and get the driver information there. If the Yamaha 1.9.9 driver is 64bit, you’re good. :slight_smile:

Hello everybody,
it seems I should have looked more in depth for problems of this audio device, since I, too, suffer from seemingly random audio drop-outs. It seems to me that the UR22 has problems with an AMD chipset, mostly a Phenom II X4. I’m having an older system and plan to upgrade in the foreseeable future, but for the moment it’s what I mostly use.
My windows system I am using has

Windows 10 Pro 64bit
AMD Phenom II X4 940 3000MHz
Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3
8GB DDR2 RAM
Radeon R9 270X

I haven’t tried out all of the possible solutions, but what I did so far was:

Tried to plug the UR22 into different USB back ports from the PC - Some were AWFUL and I couldn’t even play a wave file properly, others work with the occasional drop outs
Tried to plug the card into a USB port of a PCI USB card - Same effect as in the “good” port on the back
Used an external power adapter to power up the card - no difference whatsoever
Removed everything else from the USB ports except for keyboard, mouse and the card - no difference

Firmware and drivers are up to date.

I realized that the dropouts seem to happen randomly but they happen more often under certain circumstances. I don’t use my system solely for audio production, but also for gaming and streaming. A reason why I bought this card was to use my XLR microphone as a stream microphone. I noticed that when I ran OBS Studio(a popular streaming and screen recording software) on the side, the dropouts happened to be more frequently up to making playing games unbearable. Especially when the game is a tad more demanding for the processor and GPU.
For example, I started Playdead’s INSIDE and opened Open Broadcaster Software to capture the game. Even without recording a video or streaming, just with the preview open, the audio started to drop out extremely frequently, with all other USB devices removed.



I really like this card and its build quality; I didn’t have any trouble while using it on my Mac, which instantly made me believe this was some sort of bad chipset combination.

I know that AMD is not at the front of the market with its processors and many professionals don’t use their hardware. I plan on getting an Intel for my next machine as well. However, the lack of support for AMD chipsets makes me really angry and sad. Reading through this thread, interfaces from other manufacturers, heck, even my horrible TASCAM one that I used for way too long, have less trouble. You shouldn’t have to reconfigure your whole system via BIOS when other manufacturers just seem to get it right.

108

You are absolutely right, I figured out that that UR22 dropping out when cpu having big load for couple of miliseconds. I am from poor country and my PC really old, upgrade is about 350$ but I really satisfied with my speed of my pc and etc. Why should I pay 350$ more to make UR22 work???

So I said bye-bye to UR22MKII and bought 2i4 2nd GEN. There also was some problems but I spend 20 minutes to figure out what’s wrong instead of 5 DAYS OF MY LIFE… FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

And here is some compariosn:
-2i4 has much better sound as on main out put as on headphones. Much better, without strange distorions and low volume
-it’s no so heavy
-it’s easily swich freq. rate and sampling rate. I don’t need to switch it off and on

Dear Steinberg, you’ve lost really good customer and many others to which one I will tell about all my 5 days of nightmare. I hope your team sleep well. Also best regards to YAMAHA!

109

After carefully reading through this whole thread, I realized, people with both Intel and AMD processors as well as nVidia and AMD GPU cards have the same problems. I am currently trying to reliably recreate this problem with standard software, no luck so far. Has anyone here (if anyone is still here and not everybody has left their Yamaha card for good) gotten the audio drop outs with a CPU/GPU stress test? I was certain, it had to be a GPU, maybe even a DirectX related problem.

It’s weird, because I sit here, HOPING for the card to get its audio drop outs but they don’t happen, even if I have both a CPU and a GPU stress test running in the background and all is going on smooth.

I have also borrowed a Scarlett 2i2 for testing and verification purposes, this card works like a charm.

The only thing that is easily recreatable is opening a game in full screen mode and alt-tabbing out of it. Minimizing the window always causes audio drop outs, sometimes maximizing it does, too.

Still, the only other way for me to reliably recreate this problem is to start OBS and run a somehwat graphically demanding game at the same time. Doesn’t even need to be that demanding. But for this “recreation” it’s easy to point the finger to the evil OpenSource software even though with other audio cards this problems do not occur. :frowning:

I’ll keep looking for recreations, I’ll let you know when I found a method.

110

I have recently been rolling back Yamaha-Steinberg USB driver versions starting at 1.9.9 and going backwards to the oldest version with Windows 10 support. Turns out on my Cubase 8.5.20 and UR44 setup 1.9.5 and 1.9.6 both work okay but 1.9.8 and 1.9.9 both have major issues with peak real time VST problems (but oddly enough I don’t get audio drop outs but I can’t render out audio as Cubase stops when the peak occurs).

I’m currently investigating this with Steinberg support.

111

How do I roll back the drivers? I found a way to download the older driver files up until 1.9.6 but Windows won’t let them install me since it claims, a newer version is installed on the system already although I have deleted all of the old files and even some in the registry. I’d also greatly appreciate an installer for 1.9.5. :slight_smile:

Edit: Nevermind, I didn’t know you could simply run the setup.exe of the current version again. Still would love to try out 1.9.5 :slight_smile:

112

hi
you have to uninstall the driver first. the uninstaller is part of the driver files, like the read-me text etc… then reboot your system and install the driver you like.
on the steinberg page you´ll find a selection oft old drivers, on the yamaha homepage you can get all older versions.
greeting

113

Driver 1.9.5 can be found in the older Tools for UR44 2.11 download. There’s a driver folder in there with a setup.exe for just the driver.

I did my roll back by installing the latest UR44 Tools (with 1.9.9 driver) and just used Programs and Features to uninstall the Yamaha Steinberg USB driver (not the tools). I can then run any of the available Drivers downloaded. They all work with the same UR44 Tools.

What I would really like to understand, and so does Steinberg support, is why the latest drivers have such a dramatic change on performance on my system.

i’d also like to know if Driver 1.9.5 can work with Cubase 9.0. I’m currently not upgrading because its a bit of a lottery as to whether or not anything will continue to work with each upgrade. That said, seems lots of folks are reporting better stability with Cubase 9.0.

114

I bought a UR22mkII for Christmas, but unfortunately I am having the same problems with audio drop outs as described in earlier posts.

Operating system: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit Version 1607
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5200+ 2,7 GHz
RAM: 4,00 GB
Mainboard: Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H
Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 5450, PCIe, 1024 MB DDR3
Audio interface with driver version: UR22 mkII, Firmware 1.03, Driver 1.9.9.1

However, when testing the audio playback on my ultraportable ASUS Transformer Book T100 it’s working perfect without any dropouts. But it’s not an alternative to actually use due to the small screen size and limited performance.

Operating system: Windows 10 Pro 32-bit Version 1607
CPU: Intel Atom Quadcore Z3740 1.33 GHz
RAM: 2,00 GB
Mainboard: ?
Graphics: Integrated Intel HD Grapics.
Audio interface with driver version: UR22 mkII, Firmware 1.03, Driver 1.9.9.1

This was a Christmas gift to my kids and as an old Cubase/Steinberg user I was looking forward to teaching the kids. However, this system is impossible to use due to the constant audio drop outs. In the store where I bought the product they did not believe there is any point in testing with another copy, and I really don’t have time to wait for a possible solution that might turn up sometime in the future. So, I have to return it and look for an alternative. Very sad indeed.

115

Exactly what I am seriously considering. Steinberg customer support is NON-EXISTANT. I wanted to solve the problem by rolling back the older drivers and guess what…the driver did not uninstall completely and the older dirver refuses to install because there is apparently a newer version installed. What a joke! Now the UR-22 mkII is an expensive paperweight.

EDIT: BTW, my system is the following:
i7 6700K stable overclock to 4.8 Ghz (Skylake)
16 GB DDR4 RAM
eVga GeForce GTX 1070 everclocked HARD
SSD Samsung 250 GB
custom watercooling loop
old ASUS XONAR DX replacing the crappy Steinberg UR-22 mkII
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

116

Count me in…
Also recently tried my luck with UR824… and could not get rid of the dropouts.
Tried everything I read in these two threads and what I could find floating around in the internet.

Different USB Ports and Cables
Different Yamaha Steinberg USB Drivers
Changed stuff around in BIOS/UEFI for days
Updated all motherboard drivers… even flashed a BIOS update
Bought a cheap AMD graphics card just to check if my NVIDIA is the problem
Bought a PCIe USB card
Switched around PCIe stuff to check for irq troubles
…
I really wanted this interface to work… Not a chance… Some changes made it worse, but none made it better…
Took me 3 complete days plus some money to basically get back to where I started. I’m out of ideas and patience now.
Will have to try Presonus Studio 192 USB3

Hardware: Intel i7-5820K 32GB DDR4 RAM || Gigabyte X99 UD4 || Nvidia GTX 750 passive || Steinberg UR824 (i wish!) || M-Audio Axiom || UAD2 Octo, UAD2 Duo
Software: Win10 64 || Cubase Pro (latest beta) (64) || Wavelab (latest official version) (64)

117

Steinberg…Your silence (and complete lack of any kind of driver update since July 2016) is deafening.

118

Well I’m done, I’m RMAing. Just updated to Win10, the dropouts are so severe that I often don’t get any kind of audio output for minutes, everything I tried to correct the issue made things even worse; and it has to be said, I won’t cut EVERY functionality off my computer to get an audio unit to work, as afaik it’s not normal to have to come to such ends. This was my first Steinberg purchase, and I’m afraid this might be the last, when I see how passive you look on an issue that hits a part of your customers.

119

a little follow up…
I’m sorry to have to tell that the Presonus Studio 192 indeed works flawlessly with my computer. On the other hand I’m of course very happy to have found an alternative interface that also has two ADAT ports, which was crucial to my studio upgrade and the main reason why I wanted to trade my trusty MR816 in the first place.

Don’t get me wrong I still think the UR824 is a good piece of kit and it did perform well, except that on my system it just could not maintain an uninterrupted stream of audio data.
So my advice for everybody that suffers this problem has to be to replace the unit with one of another vendor. Chances are that it just works straight away, sparing you the headaches of fiddling with your system. Some components simply do not go well together.

I just hope that Steinberg does not morph into one of those companies (won’t mention any names… Avid!), whose stuff only tends to work on the exact same computer model and OS version it was programmed on :wink:

kind regards and the best of luck

heads-up btw:
Cubase Pro seems to have the same audio drop out issues on certain systems (including mine), where even in a lightly loaded session the ASIO Meter will occasionally peak to 100% out of nowhere, resulting in an audio drop out… cross-checked with Reaper where I used the same bunch of Plugins and Instruments and not one drop out occurred in a session with a steady ASIO load over 75%.

120

Thank you FR33M4N for following up on your alternate vendor solution that just works.

That about nails it for me - I’ve managed to get my system stable enough for my purposes at Cubase 8.5.20 and UR 44 driver 1.9.5. There will be no further upgrades on the Steinberg side (aka Cubase 9), until Steinberg actually fix the problem that is clearly in their UR driver and Cubase (or some combination thereof - UR driver 1.9.9 completely fails on my system with that being the ONLY change → it is a driver issue so far as that test can tell).

I’ve logged a support request and had follow up from Steinberg just prior to Christmas. This has included performance traces for their analysis. I’m yet to have feedback on those traces but with Christmas and New Years that isn’t a huge surprise. My hope if I, and all the others having issues, will get some updated drivers that work soon.

I also PM’d Ed Doll who started this thread because the silence from Steinberg and Yamaha is very long and very unhelpful. No reply yet but perhaps he’s enjoying a Christmas break.

I’m hopeful we can continue to lobby via this forum to get the issue resolved so this UR kit can actually work again. It’s pretty poor to leave it in silence for this long.

Next time I have some cash to change my DAW setup it may need to be a complete change.