Ok, I’ll re-add the post since people agreed with it, especially (I think) my frustration. But I did end up with a solution (see UPDATE at the bottom)…
Same here!
It’s heartbreaking to me because I really can’t afford to just throw the Steinberg unit in the trash and replace it with a Motu (or a Focusrite Scarlett, or any of the dozen other better options), but that really might be the only solution.
Steinberg UR22C cutouts and stuttering actually go back a lot farther than a year: I’ve been all over the Internet looking for solutions before I found this forum, and the UR22C complaints go all the way back to its release in 2019. Worse, the same complaints persist about its parent unit, the 2014-released UR22, as far back as its release in 2014.
Steinberg has done nothing to address this. Not in the original model, not in the “upgraded” model. They had a reputation for quality that just isn’t being held up by these devices, or by their response (silence) to our complaints about these devices.
I just upgraded to a new system (Lenovo i5, Win11, etc. etc.) and thought this device was an upgrade over my M-Audio Fast Track Pro from 2005. What a fool I was! After 18 years, that little plastic box is showing its age—the years and mileage have finally caught up with it—but it STILL works better than the thing Steinberg calls “the Perfect Portable Interface” in their promo material.
It’s nice, at least, to have the solidarity of knowing I’m not the only one finding this unit completely unusable, and Steinberg completely non-responsive. As anyone who’s ever worked tech support knows, the first & most likely cause of technical failure is always, always “user error.” My first thought is always that I’m doing something wrong with a unit that’s supposed to be pretty straightforward. Maybe I’m just technically illiterate.
But we can’t ALL be technically illiterate! I imagine many of the frustrated people on here and other threads are far more sophisticated users of this gear than I am. Even here, you can see the absurd backflips and driver gymnastics people are forced to perform to get a few precious minutes or seconds of functional use from this device.
I’m going to go try things like turning off Wi-Fi. I’ll try a different cable (this cable works on any other piece of gear). I’ll try a different USB port (this port works for any other piece of gear). I may even endanger the stability of my brand new system, which is functioning perfectly in all other ways, to tinker with the native setup, the motherboard BIOS, or anything else that sits between the UR22C and my ears that could possibly be to blame.
The thing is, we all know what’s actually to blame. It’s the UR22C itself, or the drivers released for it. We shouldn’t have to do this kind of minute level software/firmware/hardware tinkering to baby a consumer device that refuses to work on systems it was sold to work on. Why shouldn’t we be able to use the device and Wi-Fi at the same time? We can do that with basically any of the competing units on the market. Why should we have to make compromises in our workflow to accommodate a company that refuses to fix the issue on their end?
The thing is, our TIME is worth something too—both the hours we’ve spent trying to troubleshoot this stuttery, finnicky little paperweight, and the weeks we’ve spent unable to move forward in the studio or on the stage as a result of Steinberg’s refusal to address a problem that’s clearly been present from the get-go.
Thank you to the many here who have generously donated their time to the community, to come here and share your experiences, and confirm that not only is this device virtually unfixable; it’s probably not worth the investment of time to keep trying.
UPDATE: I spent another couple hours tinkering, and deleted this post because I’m no longer sure it was 100% the Steinberg’s fault… just 90% or so.
I tried a new cable, new port, turning off the sleep features of USB, etc… no luck. The culprit for me, I think, was not the wireless but the LAN port. Disabling that, for reasons I can’t explain, has dramatically improved the sound session.
