5MilesHigh
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Really Solved Now: SonarPro Audio Driver Hangs with UA-4FX usb card
Please help with setup suggestions for this audio card. The Eiderol UA-4FX is a very nice little USB audio card that I've been using for years. However, it now routinely hangs SonarPro (and X1d in both 32/64b). I have DL'ed/installed the latest 64b UA-4FX drivers (again) and re-installed my ASIO_V2.12 (again) on my W8.1_64 box. Now, this seems to be exclusively a Sonar/Cakewalk issue which is really weird since Eiderol and Cakewalk are both part of the Roland family. I say this, because I don't have any issues with it in FLS_32/64. It runs just fine standalone or in ASIO4ALL with my mobo RealTek audio. But, when it is enabled in Sonar (again either standalone or ASIO4ALL) Sonar almost always freezes up the kbd and mse (both USB) until I manually disconnect the USB cable to the UA. Sometimes it freezes up before I even try to play audio. The mse/kbd start working again once the cable gets disconnected, and after a bit I get a device disconnected msg from Sonar (though it is often not brought to the front and isn't visible until Sonar gets minimized). Sometimes, Sonar doesn't recover and will crash, and then invokes the Fault Reporter which has sent 3 or 4 post to Cakewalk just this morning. Of courses, when it does crash, it leaves an orphan process SonarSTD running which locks the UA driver for several minutes or until I use Device Manager to reset the UA. Sometimes I have gotten both cards running in ASIO mode, but it never lasts. I'm real tired of having to unplug the UA's USB cable just to call up a Task Manager or just move my mouse. I can't get any version of Sonar running reliably. Even the C3 installed version of SonarPro has this problem so it doesn't have anything to do with manual install locations for say X1d. It is running through a powered USB2 hub, but a direct plug into the box doesn't make any difference either. Even BiaB2015 doesn't have any issues with it, just Sonar. Anybody running this card and willing to offer setup suggestions in Sonar?
post edited by m.letcher@q.com - 2015/02/08 01:32:20
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5MilesHigh
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Re: SonarPro Audio Driver Hangs with UA-4FX usb card
2015/02/01 12:28:58
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Since this has all the hallmarks of an audio feedback loop, I checked and changed my input devices. The UA-4FX was my default recording input for W8 sounds, and I changed that to StereoMix. That seems to have cleared things up. ASIO and all the Sonars now work as expected. No, I don't have anything driving the UA-4FX inputs (mic/guitar or XLR) so I'm not sure what it was unhappy with, but problem solved. Back to sorting out the Browser default location.
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JonD
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Re: Solved: SonarPro Audio Driver Hangs with UA-4FX usb card
2015/02/01 12:52:13
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m.letcher@q.com
.... really weird since Eiderol and Cakewalk are both part of the Roland family.....
Not anymore. CW is part of Gibson now.  BTW, thanks for posting how you solved it. Always nice when users share their solutions with the knowledge base.
SonarPlat/CWbBL, Win 10 Pro, i7 2600K, Asus P8Z68 Deluxe, 16GB DDR3, Radeon HD5450, TC Electronic Impact Twin, Kawai MP11 Piano, Event ALP Monitors, Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro, Too Many Plugins, My lucky hat.
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5MilesHigh
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Re: Solved: SonarPro Audio Driver Hangs with UA-4FX usb card
2015/02/02 16:46:05
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Gibson, ehh. Now I know. It's tough keeping up.
Anyway, I removed the solved as it is NOT a audio fdbk loop.
What happened was, I ended up re-booting. Generally, my MOTU micro-lite USB midi interface for the HW synths, doesn't initialize correctly. Sometime it does, but frequently it doesn't. Sometimes I get orange lights to alert me other times, it looks OK, but the outport ports don't show up until I plug/unplug and it initializes. (Yeah I DL'ed the most recent driver, (again) and it doesn't help.) So, the audio was working OK until I got the MOTU midi ports on-line and then it went back to mse freeze mode. This is weird because that's the midi intf not the audio one, though the UA4FX does have midi in/out jacks to USB capability though I don't use them. The mouse unfroze if I disconnected the MOTU, but then I can't access my HW synths (Korg-WS-SR, TG-33, DX11, etc). My Axiom-25 kbd has midi jacks but I uses the USB and it goes to a hub and hasn't had any issues, thank heavens. I normally use the full kbd on my DX11 but it needs the MOTU micro-lite since it isn't USB.
I'm also seeing Sonar interfering with a second USB wireless mouse. I have no idea why, but Sonar disables it. Run Sonar and it stops working. Stop Sonar and it works just fine again in conjunction with my normal wired USB mouse. That isn't even audio or midi, so now I'm confused again. And this IS Sonar. FLS doesn't do any of this and just starts with ASIO for the UA4 or ASIO4ALL. It doesn't choke with the micro-lit providing ports and it doesn't disable the wireless mouse. Sonar does all that when it is running. Things work 'normally' after I exit Sonar. I'm guessing again now, but maybe Sonar is tying/overwhelming up the USB bus with the ASIO audio driver to the UA4? That sure seems unlikely since USB should be more than fast enough and other programs don't have any issues. And this is all happening with 16b, 44.1KHz. It doesn't get any simpler and I could be going a lot faster as the UA4 will do 96KHz and at least 24 bit.
Whatever the problem is with Sonar, I'm not happy about it. No access to external HW, no access to my secondary mse, and unpredictable audio connections. I don't recall having this much trouble with Sonar before but those were simpler times. Something is definitely wrong, so I'll probably need to file a support ticket.
Now back to finding out where my browser looks for plug-in menus. It is a Browser, I'd think it would show me its working dir, since it obviously isn't using the location specified in Preferences, but no. Silly me.
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5MilesHigh
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Re: Solved: SonarPro Audio Driver Hangs with UA-4FX usb card
2015/02/08 01:30:43
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Short story, no problem with the UA4FX but the 'input echo' controls, help and setup are rather confusing.
Finally got this sorted out as well the invisible plug-in layout browser issue. It was an audio fdbk loop and it tied up the USB bus. I still have issues with the initialization of the micro-lite (but don't expect a fix from MOTU), but now know to initialize it before starting SPro if I'll be using the external HW. The problem was with using the 'Input Echo' (IE) across multiple sound cards. So, I'd get the demo working, switch over to my trial project and try adding some VSTi's and enable the IE to hear them. However, one also needs to 'Play' even if there aren't any audio/midi data just to initialize the sound engine after switching output device for the master. I'd generally just leave it running while setting up the VSTi.
It took a while to find the entries in the help file. The entries are under 'Input Monitoring' not 'Input Echo', so it took awhile to find it. And then, I setup the ASIO4ALL correctly, and then eventually found the 'Disable Input Monitoring' option in Preferences. I also stumbled across the rtf that discusses it (eventually). And then there is the 'Always Echo Current MIDI Track' option on yet another Preferences page. So, it's 'echo' in the program and monitoring in the Help.
I've got to say, SPro is as cranky to get set up correctly as I am. Now, this is a new install, since I'm just getting into the x64 mode, but I haven't had this much trouble in quite awhile.
I also discovered that the 32b and 64b versions of both X1d and Pro share the same preferences items (probably due to common registry entries). This thru me for a loop for awhile as well. I was patiently working my way up to the latest and greatest config starting with X1_32, X1_64. SPro32, SPro64 to eventually settle on a stable C3 version. That didn't work out at all. I'd have liked to have had a 32b option since most of the VSTs I use are still 32b and it saves bridging them which has it own set of issues that I'd hoped to avoid. Maybe I won't have any more surprises since it really isn't an option anymore in SPro.
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Anderton
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Re: Solved: SonarPro Audio Driver Hangs with UA-4FX usb card
2015/02/08 01:46:27
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If I'm reading this right, it's a pretty complex setup...multiple sounds cards, multiple mice, ASIO4ALL trying to trick WDM interfaces into thinking they're ASIO...not quite sure how you're getting a feedback loop, and I definitely would not recommend a USB hub, powered or unpowered - they can appear to be working but cause issues.
Is there any way you could simplify to just one interface with its own native ASIO drivers?
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