I may have actually, finally found the cause of this issue and fixed it (on Windows based machines anyway!)
Open up control panel. Go to Device manager. Extend the tree for ‘Universal Serial Bus Controllers’. Right click on each entry that ends with ‘Hub’ and select ‘properties’. The select the ‘Power management’ tab with the properties window, and deselect ‘Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power’.
Do this for the ‘root hub’ and the other entries that end with ‘hub’. So far, so good. No (unusual) ASIO spikes and no audio drop-outs (yet!).
Worth a try. If the problem returns…So will I.
You shouldn’t be doing it at all. It will not only cripple the performance of the CPU (i7 or otherwise), it will also be detected as a hardware change by various DRM services associated with plug-ins and virtual instruments (like Native Instruments, for example) which will then cause you to have to completely reinstall hundreds of gigabytes of software and completely waste hours of your life, for nothing, because disabling hyper-threading will not solve this issue.
What I have found is that there are certain hardware configurations that do cause issues. More with the lower cost units (by the posts on this thread) but that could be because of the amount individuals pay or take the time to investigate their computer builds. But…
Now do not get me wrong, I agree that Steinberg should be taking the time to fix those issues for all, and make suggestions as to what is known to work. At least they must have some insight into this…
I early on expressed dropouts with my two UR824’s. A previous thread to this ‘Follow Up’ version. They had worked perfectly on a previous build. That system needed a re-build so I bought/built what I thought was a solid system ($1800.00 WIndows based setup-$2300 after re-rebuild caused by the drop-out issue). Went through everything to try to fix that could be done. It ended being starting over with a different MOBO that solved it. There is something to be said there. Whether chipset or USB controllers… No input back from Steinberg. That sucks.
So the interfaces work great. But not on some systems. Knowing the reason why from the developer of the interface would seem to be an obvious request. Well for some reason that just does not happen… So we get these.
I personally would suggest to any member that has issue with a Steinberg interface that does not work with your system: Return it for a refund or rebuild your system with different hardware. The fixes just do not work in most cases.
Sorry Steinberg, I love my UR824’s on my system, but it took countless hours and a rebuild to get there. Not steering away people from your products, but if you won’t take the time to explain why it doesn’t work for them, well then you don’t need their business.
I am a proud and loyal user of Cubase since Cubase 4 and love my UR824’s. It just sucks to see other users not happy…
I reiterate - this isn’t JUST a hardware or configuration issue.
Driver 1.9.5 - works
Driver 1.9.9 - doesn’t
and that’s on the same hardware with everything the same.
(for completeness 1.9.6 works slightly worse and 1.9.8 doesn’t work at all)
It is understandable that some hardware doesn’t work as well as others. Upgrading various pieces of software will also cause problems. But when the problem is isolated down to change in driver version from the vendor and they are recommending upgrading to the latest driver all the time I think there is some room for further investigation on their part.
Hopefully the Steinberg support team will be back on my case shortly as folks return to work and can isolate this issue in the code. Even more hopeful, everyone will end up with a better driver as a result.
Still getting completely random audio drop-outs that are triggered by sudden, unexplained ASIO spikes. The only explanation for it is driver instability.
Seeing as the Focusrite 2i2 works perfectly (with drivers released in 2011), I am about ready to sell my UR824 and get something that I know is reliable.
Has anyone tried this on a 2015 or 2016 retina MacBook Pro? Do the dropout issues occur?
I’m looking for a new audio interface and was leaning towards the UR22mkII, there are lots of other alternatives in the price range with identical spec but the chance to try Cubase (Cubase AI) and Cubasis on iPad was pushing me in this direction.
Other alternatives are the new Roland Rubix22, Focusrite Saffire 2i2 2nd gen.
Seems the only way to try Cubase is to buy it outright or get the lite versions with some hardware.
Hi
You can have luck with youre setup and the ur22 mkII like many users, but if not… arghhhh
but you may use a 30 day money back offer to check it out?
if you like to try out cubase, you can try them out for some time as an demo?!, if i remember it right.
because of the ignorance from the steinberg support and my problems with my very old imac and my ur22 mkII i would choose another brand now, but i missed the 30 day money back option. >:-/
even the new and inexpensive hd204 by behringer seem to be a good choise, especially with mac.
for me, behringer and with a higher budget, zoom and native instruments are brands, i will have a closer look to.
if you can choose…, after i bought my interface, i got an old yamaha keyboard and man, i never will do without that midi stuff and a keyboard anymore, untill you are sure to only use usb stuff i would watch out for midi, thats why i choose the ur22, because the focusrite 2i2 has no midi and the 2i4 was more expensive than the steinberg.
have you tried reaper as an daw? i love it. some work to get use of it, but i really like it. but some things, i like on cubase more, but i´m very new to all this homerecording stuff.
so, good luck and may the groove be with you.
After a lot of reading I have decided to go with something else, it looks like there are just too many problems with this device… audio drop outs, and problems with macs on the Sierra update.
I will look into Reaper as I wont be trying Cubase anytime soon.
@ gameover
good luck
for me the problems with mac has occured with el capitan, my mac is to old for sierra.
it seems that the problems are often with how apple changed the usb implication or something to the operating systems. so, steinberg is not the only one to blame. on the other hand, other brands, not all of them, but some have managed to programm new, working drivers in time…
it seems to be real task, or need many luck, or a lot of money to get a flawless working system.
a real shame, because the interface sounds good an feels very good to.good quality on the hardware side. but why the f… they are not able to find a good programmer?
Hello everyone! I’m sad to read that there is still no news from Steinberg about this. Please, don’t leave us hanging there!
For New Year’s, I reformatted my system hard drive and gave it a clean install of Windows 10 Pro x64. It did indeed resolve many of my issues I had, however the audio drop outs was not one of them.
As mentioned before, since livestreaming is one of the main usages I have for this interface, apart from audio production, I have prepared a little setup with which I was able to VERY RELIABLY recreate the issue.
Here’s a quick explanation of what you will see:
This is a short gameplay footage from Playdead’s 2016 game INSIDE. I recorded it with OBS Studio version 17.0.0. I have tried several different configurations inside of OBS before, both hardware and software encoding, different quality, you name it. With OBS running and capturing the game at the same time - no matter whether recording/streaming or not - the dropouts are way more frequent, however this problem occurs without it nevertheless, just way more rarely/almost by chance.
I have tried different solutions offered in this thread already, including powering the device by an external power source or using different USB ports (some don’t seem to work at all); for this recording the USB cable was stuck into a USB port of an extra PCI card. I have tried different cables as well, this one is not the original. In the final video the same scene is recorded with a Scarlett 2i2 interface, in the same USB port, using the same cable, and as you can see (and hear) no trouble at all. I have also removed all other devices from my USB ports (controller, webcam,…) to test if they interfered with the interface, but no difference spotted.
I have tried driver versions 1.9.5, 1.9.6, 1.9.8 and 1.9.9 and they seem to get progressively worse - but see for yourself! 1.9.5 indeed brings the best experience, however it’s far from flawless!The captured window in the top right corner is Dbgview for which I had hopes to maybe give us some insight of what causes the problem but sadly nothing is there to see. Maybe I configured it wrongly? In the bottom right corner you can see the audio device captured and the light blinking whenever audio is dropping out.
Here’s the video playlist:
The only thing I can say for sure is that dropouts always happen when you minimize a full screen application.
If the bug is not soon found by Steinberg, I don’t see another option than to sell the device again and move to a competitor. Especially a budget price interface is not supposed to only run on a very specific kind of PC.
Hopefully this might help some people out… after almost giving up, I saw on another forum a suggestion to remove google chrome. I uninstalled google chrome from my laptop and now my UR interface is running beautifully. Not only that, a lot of other issues I was having were resolved by removing chrome.
I had the same problem with my new UR22mkII after some days of fine operation. Audio drop outs with blinking LED even on normal playback (average 1-2s pauses every half a minute or so).
After trying every crazy possible software and hardware solution, it eventually works well at the last USB port I tried. I had the mouse in that port so I only had tried the 7 rest (2 front, 6 back) and it worked on none of them (the first week it worked fine on any of them). I changed USB for my mouse and put the UR22 there instead and it works fine for some hours now. That’s strange as that port shares the same motherboard-soldered USB hub as a port next to it that didn’t work.
Also, something to maybe consider is that something that made it 100% stable while connected on the other ports, was enabling loopback from Control Panel → Yamaha Steinberg Usb Driver, which of course is not a legit solution. When I found about that I almost gave up as it made it like 100% a driver issue.
PC: AMD Phenom II 965BE, Nvidia GT730, 4GB RAM, Asrock 880GM-LE FX
I just tried to recreate the exact same setup on a friend’s pc running Windows 7. As you would exepct when trying to track down such a bug, the interface did perfectly fine, no dropouts with the 1.9.9 driver.
Stupid me of course only tried out the “play that portion of Inside with OBS capturing the game in the background” but I didn’t especially try out the “minimize a full screen window with audio playing in the background”. I might try that one out at a later time, but I suspect, it’s next to impossible to find a reliable way to recreate this issue on every machine now.
Hello,
I’m have same issues for 6 month with UR824 after upgrade my rig, audio dropout on recording, play media player, stream youtube, etc
tried all i found on forum
now my rig are :
Win 7 64 bit
Intel Core i5 4460
8,00GB Dual-Channel DDR3
Gigabyte H97M-D3H
Fujitsu F100-256GB SCSI Disk Device (SSD)
WDC Black 1 Tb
Nvidia 750ti
before upgrade my rig, i didn’t have issues, it’s work well…
my old rig :
An update for those of you who share the issue.
Still no response from Steinberg either here or on my lodged support request where they were once responding. I pinged them again for a status update on the support ticket and also private messaged Ed Doll who started this thread for at least a response from Steinberg.
Interesting that there seem to be so many solutions, which work for different people… here, deactivating my wi-fi card works. For others, changing the USB cable worked. For you, uninstalling Chrome worked… WTH is it with these devices. If it really is a driver issue, then there’s gotta be something really unstable/whacky about it.
Really hope that Steinberg puts out some news about this issue soon. It’s really more than about time. Please guys, don’t let your customers stand in the rain like that. These interfaces are great (especially at this price point), but they should work for the big majority of people.
If it really is a driver issue, then there’s gotta be something really unstable/whacky about it.