Hi all, Thanks in advance to anyone who can weigh in on this. I use Sonar Home Studio 7 on a Windows 7 64 bit PC, with a Shure USB condenser mic going straight into the computer. A few months ago I began using ASIO as the driver, and recording and playback worked flawlessly for months. Yesterday, all of a sudden, when I record I get a loud, consistent static on top of whatever I am recording. It's not the mic (it happens using the built-in mic as well) and it only happens when using ASIO as the driver. It disappears when I use the built-in driver, but I need to use ASIO for all the obvious reasons of latency and multi-track playback. Also, it only happens in Sonar. I am not getting the static when I record in Reaper using ASIO. I tried reinstalling Sonar and ASIO4ALL, it didn't help. I tried uninstalling Windows updates between now and when it was last working properly, it didn't help. Any ideas what the problem could be? Thanks.

The first thought is to increase the ASIO latency to see if that helps.  Has anything else changed?  Do you have more tracks that you had before or maybe some other processes that are running at the same time as Sonar or effects being used?

You can't use ASIO mode with a USB microphone because Windows treats USB mics as another sound device and ASIO only allows one sound device in use at a time. You have to switch to WDM (or MME) mode if you plan to use a USB mic. 

@Daveny5, thanks for weighing in, but that is not the problem. ASIO drives the USB mic, it shows up in the ASIO control panel and can be activated and deactivated. It also shows up as a playback and recording option in the software audio options (ASIO4ALL Shure USB) It worked fine for months, and now stopped working (well, it works, but there's a horrible static now too). Also, the same problem exists using ASIO as the driver but using the computer's built-in microphone. It all started out of the blue one day.

@Jhughs, thanks. I will try to increase the ASIO latency, and monitor the computer processes. Nothing obvious has changed. I even re-installed Sonar and ASIO4ALL, and it did not correct the problem.

Dearcolombo, ASIO4ALL is not actually an ASIO driver. It's WDM wrapped to imitate ASIO. if there are ASIO drivers made for the Shure it would be worth trying.
The built in mic of the computer is another story. Have you made sure it's disabled when you're using the USB-mic? Having the integrated chip and mic enabled simultaneously with the Shure sure sounds like problems.

If this only happens in SONAR, have you checked that all settings in Reaper and SONAR are similar?

ASIO4ALL is not actually an ASIO driver. It's WDM wrapped to imitate ASIO.

Thanks, Kalle. Exactly what I would have written. 

My recommendation is to get rid of the USB mic, ditch ASIO4ALL and use your audio interface's real ASIO driver. 

@Kalle,thanks for clarifying. And yes, that was the issue! Both the USB mic and the built-in hardware of the computer were "activated" or "enabled" simultaneously within the ASIO4ALL settings. I disabled the built-in hardware in the ASIO4ALL settings and the problem went away. Thank you to everyone who commented on this thread. I appreciate it. Best.