I posted a thread earlier regarding making two sound cards work right together, and received great advice: Hook one sound card (Echo Layla) to the other (Focusrite 18i20) via ADAT lightpipe.

I did that, and got the two sound cards to play nice together. I can hear the inputs on the Layla through the Focusrite just fine.

What's not fine is how Sonar (Platinum) is playing w/ the driver sets of the two. 

When I first opened Sonar, it was already set to ASIO drivers. Only the Echo unit was checked, and the Focusrite drivers were greyed. I unchecked all the Echo drivers, and voila' the Focusrite drivers became selectable. I selected them, and then closed Sonar.

When I reopened Sonar, all the Echo inputs had been reselected. "Hmmm ... that's weird.", I thought. I deselected them ... and ... nothing. The Focusrite drivers apparently now are permanently invisible ... even though they're there and grayed out. They will not allow themselves to be seen.

"Okay," I said to myself, "I'll change to WDM and see if I can get things to work." This results in a different issue. Although, again, I'm getting signal between the devices communicating just fine, Sonar won't read the ADAT section of the Focusrite. It reads the analog section fine, but the digital section is dark ... it doesn't even appear in the driver selection as digital.
 
... which is frustrating, because in ASIO, it absolutely distinguishes between the analog and digital ins/outs --- but --- we go back to problem #1, they remain stubbornly invisible.

... and yet I'm getting signal to the Focusrite from the Echo just fine.

Any thoughts from folks here on what my fix might be?

Thanks in advance!
 
Kev-

You do not need the driver for the device you are light-piping FROM. Sonar does not need access to this device for audio. Either remove the driver completely or disable it in Windows device  manager.
I guess you could also disconnect the cable (USB or FIREWIRE) and leave the drivers alone if the device is self-powered.

In my futzing w/ things, for reasons unbeknownst to me, the Focusrite simply stopped "seeing" the Echo unit. I'm frankly pretty fed up w/ the Focusrite unit simply ... let's be kind and call it "flaking out". It is NOT doing what it is supposed to do, and is a very "temperamental" device.
 
I experimented w/ running OUT of the Focusrite into the Echo ... for Sonar could see the Echo ASIO drivers quite well.

Nope. Word clock on the Focusrite kept pulsing the inputs on the Echo. That didn't happen in the other direction ... with the Echo feeding the FR ... but then when I reversed it back? The FR wouldn't read the Echo again. It just wasn't behaving as designed.

Grrrrr ....

Nonetheless ... I came up w/ a work around solution. I'm back to working in WDM. I've got the units being read in Sonar ... and it can now see ALL the inputs from both cards ... albeit the two are not "communicating" w/ each other. I solved this by sending the monitors out of the FR and the Echo to a Big Knob ... where I can monitor both at once and feed headphones out to the players. It's not the most versatile solution, but ... it works ... and so I'm going to run with it.

It might be nice, though, for things to work as they should ...

The usual way ADAT works is for the DAW to see only one interface, the interface and its own software handling the ADAT unit.

For example, with my UFX the DAW only "sees" or needs to see the UFX. Connecting an ADAT unit to the DAW means the ADAT inputs and outputs can be controlled by the RME totalmix software, which then presents the ADAT unit to the DAW as an extra eight usable inputs (and outputs) which, as far as the DAW is concerned, are simply extra connections in the UFX.

The UFX driver exposes all the available UFX inputs whether anything is connected to them or not by the way.

So the relevant driver to use would be the one for whichever unit is acting as the audio interface. Then the additonal ADAT connections should be available via the interface's own mixer/control software, and show up in the DAW as inputs from that. At tleast, that's how these things generally seem to work.