Had windows 10 pro with cubase 14 pro and MOTU 828X as the ‘sound card’ - updated to windows 11, as soon as it started there was a howling from the audio, turns out windows 11 decided to take matters in it’s own hands and create/allocate it’s own internal return monitor control at 100% level ! - sorted by turning the damn thing down, will have to see exactly what role it has compared to the MOTU’s which was working fine.
Ran cubase, stopped when it informed me I would have to re-install/purchase ilok key for cubase as the OS was different (!), sorted by turning off ilok before re-booting, then turn it on when windows 11 was ready so the ilok would be ‘accepted’.
Ran cubase again, at nearly completion it informs me my internal midi 3 and 5 were unassigned, so to was my midi interface - had to go to studio/midi settings, all the settings layouts were visually different to window 10’s, managed to (I think) restore the unassigned midi ports with the exception of internal midi 5, will have to try to work out where and what it was.
What a nightmare - my confidence is shaken with win 11, and I haven’t even got into the nitty gritty of cubase yet to see what else win 11 has tampered with - thank God I made a disk clone back up of win 10 first, I will have to load it, take notes, then run win 11 to spot any differences in win 11.
Microsoft is acting like a nanny that thinks it knows all about music software and what will work ‘better’ for me !!
Yeah, that message comes from a VST plugin. Because it appears in the Cubase window people think it is generated by Cubase.
This misconception doesn’t happen for the first time, nor will it have happened for the last.
FWIW, I also use the MOTU 828X with Cubase, but I built a new system for Windows 11 as my old system couldn’t be upgraded (and I needed a performance upgrade anyway, so the Windows 10 end of support ended up providing a deadline).
I don’t have experience with this upgrade on the same system, but I can say that I had no similar problems with the 828x on the new system. Of course, I had to reinstall all the 828x software on the new system, but the internal saved state on the 828x restored my settings. The other thing I had to do for Cubase connections purposes, was bring over a couple of XML files (in addition to importing the profile I’d saved on the old system, which doesn’t include the audio configuration). I found the info on which files from a post on the topic in this forum.
The only 828x-related problem I did have was that I had to switch from Thunderbolt 2 on the old system to USB2 on the new system, as the new system doesn’t have Thunderbolt 2 (and the Thunderbolt 4 it does have on the motherboard isn’t backwardly compatible with Thunderbolt 2 on Windows). I’d had to use the 828x with USB2 for a short period with the old system, and it disconnected frequently, which it was also doing on this system. I think I’ve narrowed it down to the USB2 cable, though. I swapped the original MOTU USB2 cable with one I had lying around from an interface I haven’t used in eons, and, at least thus far (a full afternoon of work), it hasn’t disconnected.
As others have said, iLok would not be related to Cubase itself. However, I suspect it is likely that iLok saw the Windows 11 OS as making for a different system than your Windows 10 system despite being on the same hardware. (I saw that happen when I upgraded my graphics card on my old system, so this time I was careful to deactivate all my iLok plugins on the old system then reactivate them on the new system after I had all hardware I’d be adding installed.) If this is the case, and you can’t deactivate the plugins on your upgraded system, there is a way to request new activations via the iLok Manager. I don’t remember the details at this point, but I had to go through that in my past video card change situation. Some of the plugin vendors came through quickly, others took a while but came through, and there was one where I had to directly contact the vendor’s support to finally get them to come through.
This is an upgrade on the same system? I’m surprised if that is the case, though it would make sense for a move to a new system. But I think that may also be part of what the XML file copies I did covered (I know it definitely was what got the audio connections back to how they were).
This may give you the chance to unauthorize/deactivate all the software using iLok and/or other system-dependent authorization mechanisms such as specific system disks, Windows itself, etc., while on that old disk, then reactivate on the upgraded system.
As for Windows 11 itself, there is a fair amount of personalization-type stuff you’ll likely want to turn off to make it not be annoying with ads, news, weather, etc. But, once that stuff is dealt with, it seems to be a pretty good experience for me thus far.
To be fair, if I were just building another WIndows 10 PC, it wouldn’t have been much different. With the exception of authorizations that use a hardware dongle, all the authorizations are tied to specific hardware, and sometimes that can even change when you upgrade a current system. For example, I mentioned the video card thing with iLok above, but there was also a case with Waves where I disabled my Wi-Fi device on my old PC because I could now connect via Ethernet, and that broke Waves (on the same Windows 10 system). And when my hard disk failed on that system, and I replaced it with an SSD, that broke the Steinberg activations.
Moving to new physical PC (especially after 11 years on the previous one) takes things to another level altogether since almost everything on the hardware side is new, and all the software, and some of the peripherals, need to be physically moved. (I did not even consider just taking a full backup on the old system and restoring it on the new one due to a combination of the changed hardware, changed OS, planning a different layout with additional disks, and wanting to clean out a lot of legacy stuff like older versions of software, VST2 versions of plugins, etc.)
By contrast, my upgrade on the old system from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 was relatively painless. But the biggest issues I faced this time around were actually hardware-related (e.g. wrong CPU in the CPU box on the first attempt, faulty memory slot on the first motherboard). The software and drivers side mostly went pretty smoothly (at least partly because I’d done a good deal of research and planning ahead of even building the new system, especially with respect to what I might need to do on the deactivate/move/activate side of things). That even includes pre-2010 products (mostly Kontakt libraries that Native Access 2 can no longer activate, but one for ARIA player) that are no longer available or supported – I was initially running those on Windows XP on a Core 2 Duo E6000 CPU with 4 GB of RAM! There were special hoops to jump through (e.g. temporarily downgrading to Native Access 1 to authorize in some cases, and actually reinstalling from the original media or backups of the installation downloads in other cases), but those products are still working 3 PC builds and 4 Windows versions (I skipped Vista and Windows 8.0) later.
If you’re using ASIO, Windows 11 has nothing to do with it at all. ASIO drivers don’t get any interference from Windows mixing, levels, effects, etc.
As to the return monitor, that’s something the MOTU devices have always had, even on Windows 10. Chances are your mute in the MOTU mixer app (I forget the name) didn’t transfer over through the reinstall.
You did a complete OS upgrade. There are going to be some differences with settings that don’t carry over, or things that change after a device driver reinstall. They aren’t “nanny” stuff like you’ve suggested here.
had to go to studio/midi settings, all the settings layouts were visually different to window 10’s
That’s confusing. Windows isn’t going to change what Cubase’s UI looks like beyond maybe the titlebars. There’s no studio/midi settings in Windows 10, so I assume you’re talking about what is in Cubase. Cubase, typically if you scroll to the right, will show you what MIDI devices it’s looking for. If you have devices just named “midi5” and similar, it’s likely that you used something like loopMIDI and set up virtual devices.
r.e. ASIO - Not so much ASIO but I’m using MOTU 828X as ‘the sound card’.
r.e. return monitor - yes, I’m aware of the MOTU 828X having that, so why did Win 11 feel it ‘had’ to not only copy/duplicate that but set it at 100% in which EVERY time I zero it, the next session sees it at 100% AGAIN causing echo/feedback - BTW - even with MOTU’s return monitor path physically removed !
r.e. ‘that’s confusing’ - Cubase when it starts up some of my midi assignments are made ‘unassigned’, I have solved a couple (I think) but the last one is a ongoing investigation - that probably also explains the changed visual difference when the midi assignment order is also changed.
I would have really liked Win 11 to be a 100% goer, as it is I have dropped back to Win 10 to finish a project without these distractions - will return to Win 11 when that is done.
Maybe I don’t quite understand what you are seeing, because what you are describing, and something I’ve personally experienced on Windows 10 and 11, is something the MOTU device does, not Windows. It’s not something new – it’s been happening with MOTU devices for a good decade, in my experience. It would even happen before Windows actually booted up. If it’s not happening for you in Windows 10, take a note of all your MOTU settings in the mixing app (take pics) and then if/when you decide to try Windows 11 again, ensure the settings are identical.
The only other thing I can think of here is that you are unplugging the MOTU device from Windows and then plugging it in a different USB port and then Windows thinks it’s a new device? In those cases, the volumes are set to 100% when first plugged in. This seems unlikely though, given you said it happens time and again.