UR22 mkII - Audio dropouts problem

I’ve been in love with a Yamaha MOX6 keyboard and Steinberg Cubase for about ten years and all was well until upgrading to Windows 10x64 and Cubase 11, and now Cubase 12.

I began getting the “Audio interruption due to USB error is detected message” even on simple projects using a 528 sample rate which surprised me because my older PC had no issues at 128 samples. I tried suggestions on this forum and elsewhere with no success until rolling back to Steinberg USB drivers v1.7.3 or v1.9.6 as suggested on this thread. Both versions work fine even with a 96 sample rate, but I’m sticking with v1.9.6 because v1.7.3 isn’t listed for Windows 10.

The only (wonderful) triviality now is seeing the Audio Performance Meter’s horizontal Peak bar max out red when I reset the Mix Console’s Loudness Meter at a 64 sample rate, but that’s a non-issue. The Peak Meter almost maxes at 96 and improves with higher sample rates as expected.

Yamaha’s support page does not list these older drivers for the MOX6 keyboard; they only list v2.0.3, v2.0.4, and v2.1.1 which all failed for me.

Huge thanks to those who posted older drivers as a possible fix, and thanks @BenLochmann for the link to the drivers.

Cubase 12
Yamaha MOX6 Keyboard
Windows 10-64
MSI Meg X570 Unify
Ryzen 9 3900x
64 GB Ram

make sure you have checken my post to fix it:

Hello audiophiles,

I want to point people to another possible solution, because I have not seen this mentioned yet - at least not in connection to the UR22 explicitly or any other usb audio interface that is.

TL;DR: either stop your HDDs from spinning down at all OR (preferably) find whatever software interrupts your hdds’ sleep which in turn might cause “blockade” of the transmission of your audio stream.

Looong explanation:

The first step I did was of course to run LatencyMon - as we all do :wink:

First thing I noticed: extremely high latency of the NVIDIA driver. But this was easily solved by switching to “Prefer Max Performance” in the driver control panel. Latency spike gone - but dropouts remained. Damn.
So I went about the usual stuff we all love: putting drivers into MSI mode, giving the UR22’s USB controller hub a high priority in MSI (just like you would do for a NVME or fast LAN card - usually not needed for usb2 audio, but hey, I was desperate^^), stopping USB Selective Suspend, disabling PCI-E Energy Savings etc.

It all seemed(!) to help a little - but did not solve the problem after all. And in retrospect it does not even seem necessary, I should honestly admit that!

All this became obvious to me when LatencyMon gave me the final hint that I needed to find the actual culprit: it told me about ACPI.sys ruining my day(s, months, years)…which again pointed me towards energy savings…which at first puzzled me - but then it hit me hard.

All my problems were related to the path that the data takes on the motherboard! Both the SATA (plus one m.2 NVME in slot 3 actually, which would also get disconnected during the dropouts) and the UR22’s USB controller are connected to the PCH (formerly known as Southbridge) which in turn is connected to the CPU and RAM (formerly known as Northbridge) over the mainboard’s DMI (formerly known as Front-Side-Bus).

Whenever my hdds were accessed by some stupid M$ background or whatever service that forces itself upon you, the bus would be blocked for the time it took to spin the hdds back up. This had escaped my detection b4 - because it only occurs when multiple hdds spin up at the same time. During those moments nothing could communicate smoothly over that bus (which the driver seems to detect in the new Yamaha version 2.1.1, and this might lead to resetting of the driver now).

Now the search began. I traced any access to my hdds with perfmon/resmon/processexplorer, and shut it down! That is I went about deleting preinstalled UWP apps and packages, shutting down services for telemetry etc. and also stopping scheduled tasks like the MS-Defender scanning for “no” reason.

After all that is now done, I do have not only a silent and “energy conscious” PC, but also audio without dropouts.

So check the route that the data takes on your mainboard, and do not just settle for disabling all energy savings! It does work, and it is not a problem that Steinberg created. Yet, they could invest more time into supporting people online when such problems arise…I guess.

Good luck.

Can also potentially force uninstall xbox game bar (pc) to fix this one.
But then you get that “select a program to load” box which you can ignore.

I have gotten it working. On my third complete clean of the entire operating system. I removed everything and deleted all of my storage files, Cloud Downloaded straight to Windows 11. I did not install any drivers. It’s currently working however the latency is pretty bad, it says 11ms but it’s more like 11 - 100 randomly. So I’m about to install the Yamaha Steinberg Driver. And we will see if it still works.

-edit-

My method of fixing the drop out issue on the steinberg UR22 is listed at the very bottom.

  • Alright we’re back to normal and you best believe I’m never updating anything ever again

  • (tested all driver and chipset updates, new motherboard, new Steinberg specific USBs, new power supply, new cpu, custom power options, custom usb handling options, custom uefi settings) [ Failed]

  • Reinstalled windows 10 from usb [Failed]

  • Reinstalled windows 10 from usb and upgraded to windows 11 [Failed]

  • Cleaned entire system including internal drives and Reinstalled Windows 10 from USB [Failed]

-CLEANED ENTIRE SYSTEM INCLUDING INTERNAL DRIVES AND REINSTALLED WINDOWS 11 FROM CLOUD [ PASS ]
-INSTALLED YAMAHA STEINBERG USB DRIVER 2 . 1 . 1 WITH NO UR22 FIRMWARE UPDATE [ PASS ]

So, I don’t have a NVidia graphics card to uninstall drivers. Haha but the problem exists

What is the driver you deinstalled?

FWIW : I just fixed the same audio dropout problem (Gigabyte PC, windows 10). After trying just about every option I could find on the internet (powermanagement, Turbo boost OFF ,USB3 port, USB 2port , updating drivers, reinstalling Cubase , and…moooore …pfff)
I ended up with this (read 5 before you try it yourself) :
1.removing the USB driver(device manager)
2.uninstalling the Yamaha USB driver (Steinberg dot net)
3.connecting the UR MK2 to a USB 2 port (to an USB 3 port would likely yield the same result ?)
4.installing the Yamaha USB driver 2.04 …
5. As a last step I wanted to install the latest firmware update , but it was already installed (forgot) and I left as it was. So…maybe it’s best to install this firmware update …first ! (Steinberg dot net)

DONE !!! : no more audio dropouts, no clicks, no beeps, no freezing . Feels like I won the lottery … Conclusion: if you don’t use the CD included, Windows will try to recognize and install a driver for your UR22 MK2, and it will conflict with the Yamaha usb drivers. Removing the USB driver did it for me ( I guess…)

Same issue here. 2023

I’ve had audio dropouts on my UR22.
Mine was fixed by changing the USB cable to a new one.

I have it, and i got the same problems. You pride yourself on great drivers then this?

If you think people are going to take you seriously when you tell them to turn a 3.0 marketed device into 2.0, or disable TURBO boost? I’m just returning this for another unit from a different company. No one is going to downclock their CPU and RAM just to get a busted driver to work.

I just don’t think these people who think they are experts get it. When you buy a product it is supposed to just work, especially for audio creation. Artists and musicians do not want to be troubled with rolling back drivers, adjusting windows settings, disabling high performance features that they spent good money that renders their purchase less valuable. None of these “solutions” are solutions. Universal audio, scarlett, Zoom, presonus, never had any issues like these with said interfaced, They JUST work.

Also please tell me in the product description where just because it’s an audio device means i have to use my PC solely for audio recording? Lets start with the basics. Clicking and popping are related to buffer size and frequency. Audio dropouts are different, that is when you actually lose hardware functionality due to, in this case a USB interruption. So what you say about adjusting buffer rate will do nothing. And if you actually go through the forum here and take time to read the complaints of rightfully upset customers. You will see no one has posted saying hey i changed the buffer size and my problem went away. Setting your USB power savings adds up, but it sure hasn’t fixed the problem for anyone. It’s so evident the issue is with the driver and some lack of optimization for other hardwares.

@Mistwalker several people have posted in this thread about the solutions they found.

If you going to make this personal, we won’t allow that.

Since I’m returning this piece of junk, I no longer care. Sorry you feel it’s personal, but telling people to turn off Performance enhancement settings is trolling at least. No one has fixed this problem, it’s been stated on 6 or more threads that it’s “intermittent” the issues just come back or take longer to produce. You can not just say here do this, and then criticize people for not dumping their GPU drivers and changing UEFI settings for an audio interface.

Nothing personal but please stop pretending to call the issue solved.

Have a nice day.

You too, maybe in my spare time, i’ll install a copy of windows 7, disable my Turbo, Run JEDEC ram, and get rid of my GPU drivers and just play minecraft in 30 fps so i can use CUBASE on USB 2.0 and decide to keep this device :3. Think about what you are facilitating. Use a better business model.

I suggest you tell all the other steinberg users who struggle and advise honesty instead of poorly advised troubleshooting steps that they too are toxic. You dont want to help u just want to look good here. Im with in my right to be heavily frustrated since i have tried all these silly uefi changes. We spend money and u tell us to downgrade our hardware? Not helpful. Yes and we should all take therapy instead of returning this item? Ok. You are not the arbitrator of who and who should not be into music.

Its fine im not angry at you and find this all amusing. I was told that Steinberg has the best drivers ever and I like the way this sounds. I promise you as someone who has built and custom looped 6 personal pcs and used audio with them i tried all these suggestions

  1. I have a x670e f with 7800x3d and 7900xtx 32 ddr5 at 6k. Kahru tested 8 hours p95 8 hours small fft avx 2
  2. I run multiboot with linux and tried uefi sec boot anyway didnt solve it
  3. Usb 2.0 nope
  4. Im not running jedec to fix this or turning off turbo features
  5. I tried turning off amd graphical features like radeon boost
  6. Reinstalled realtek drivers
  7. Usb power saving in device manager nope

It is what it is, if those things fix it for others im happy for em but no one shud disrupt their product intentions to cope like this