Using E-MU Patchmix under Win7 64

I got Win7 and SONAR 8.5.2 64 up and running without too much difficulty, but ran into a couple of issues I need to sort out. I haven't investigated much yet, but thought I would run them by the SONAR64/Win7/Patchmix braintrust for possible quick answers:

1. Under WinXP, SONAR saw only the I/O channels that were configured in the Patchmix DSP session, and saw the port names that Patchmix advertises (e.g. Dock Out 3L/3R) that in turn were translated to friendly names in SONAR. Under Win7, SONAR shows a generic list of 16 input and 16 output pairs enumerated like ASIO In 1, 3, 5... ...31. This is what SONAR would see under XP If Patchmix wasn't running. If I reassign I/O in a project to match this naming scheme, everything works fine, but I don't want to see all 16 I/O pairs when I only have approximately 4 of each configured in Patchmix, and I don't want to have to re-do all my friendly naming in SONAR if I can help it (I was planning to just copy/paste from my old AUD.INI file). As far as I can tell, Patchmix is running fine with the Vista 64 driver, but Win7 is just reporting generic device driver names to SONAR.

2. As has been recently discussed in a number of threads, Win XP had an option in Sounds and Audio Devices to tell Windows to Use Only Default Devices. This made it easy to configure Windows to use only the onboard soundcard, leaving my 1820m for SONAR. Win7 doesn't seem to have this check box, and is in fact trying to use the 1820m for recording, since it's detecting that no mics or cables are plugged into the Realtek's inputs, and consequently will not let me set that as the default device. This makes SONAR report that the drivers are in use when I start it, and may cause other problems down the road. Do I have to plug something into the Realtek in order to make it the default device for recording, and is there a  way to tell Win7 to only use default devices once I accomplish that?

I have a E-MU 1616m and I am not seeing this behavior. 

My Windows Audio control panel only sees two E-mu devices (one playback/one record) and its not selected, the Realtek audio is. I'm pretty sure that you can play with the Patchmix stuff to determine what shows up where. Its not very intuitive but once you figure out what its doing it's ridiculously flexible. Which you probably already know

In Win 7 you should be able to right-click the Realtek devices and specify them as the default devices. You may want to try updating the Realtek drivers as well. I believe that they have an option to disable automatic jack detection in the Realtek control panel.

-eB

Have to keep bumping this one until someone running Patchmix with SONAR x64 on Win7 can confirm or refute that SONAR always sees 16 generic I/O pairs in the drivers tab, regardless of what is set up in the Session file.

brundlefly


Have to keep bumping this one until someone running Patchmix with SONAR x64 on Win7 can confirm or refute that SONAR always sees 16 generic I/O pairs in the drivers tab, regardless of what is set up in the Session file.

 Yes . I'm seeing the same thing also. As long as the ones that I use are at the top of the list,it doesn't really bother me.
 Isn't there a tab under Audio Settings that allows you to disable drivers?  I wonder if you can deselect all the ones you don't use.
  I've also noticed with patchmix that befor moving to Windows 7 x64 I could control the monitor volume with the volume controls on my keyboard. I can no longer do that.
 

I don't have the same wory or concern. 

Does this mean that SONAR sees all 16 I/O pairs but you don't care? Or do you see only the ports used in the Patchmix session?

The only differences that I can see is that I have an 1616M and I'm running SONAR 32-bit instead of SONAR x64 like you...

 
Is this 32-bit SONAR on Win7 64 or Win7 32?
 
 

SONAR 32-bit on Windows 7 x64...

Interesting. I thought if anything this was a general issue with the 64-bit Vista driver on Win 7, but this suggests it's 64-bit SONAR that has the problem.

E-MU support wrote back and said essentially, "Sorry, Win7 is not specifically supported, but the Vista 64 driver should work", even though I specifically asked them to comment on whether this problem has ever been reported under Vista x64, and what they would suggest to resolve it in that case.

Might have to drop a line to Cakewalk support.

My version of Win7 (no xp mode) would stop the loading of any drivers for any other version.

I'm running Home Premium also - so no XP mode. The Vista driver should load okay for you in Win7. Did you download and try the 2.1 update? I was already using it on XP, and it installed seamlessly on Win7. I'm not sure how it handles x86 vs. x64. They somehow built it all into one driver package.

Thanks for the input, Steve. So you're using WDM driver mode for your 1616m? I've tried both in troubleshooting this, but normally use ASIO. No difference in terms of the way I/O is displayed in Win7 x64 either way. I'm pretty much reaching the conclusing that this is an x64 driver issue.
 
I also tried disabling onboard sound, but my preferred M.O. is to leave the onboard sound enabled for Windows to use. I turn off system sounds, but I like to have the onboard sound system avaiklable for playing multimedia from the Web since my DAW is my all-purpose PC. I also use it to preview mixes for stuff I will post on the web myself. Even though Win7 doesn't specifically let you force it only use default devices like XP did, I haven't had any trouble with it.

Think you misunderstood i chose to disable WDM in sonar and use ASIO, windows 7 sounds use WDM which enables me to use media player etc, i dual boot for internet use still using my 1616m.

Cheers
Steve.

No I have no answer to the output naming problem. Just going to have to wait and see if a new driver comes out, but  by then I may have so many new projects started with the new naming that I won't want to change again.
 
As for EmulatorX, I know that the free ProteusVX does not run under SONAR x64,and I believe I read that the original EmulatorX won't either, but newer versions might.

I sent them e-mail about it, and got:

Thank you for contacting us at E-MU Customer Support.
Well, in my opinion, I think there is much improvement in Windows 7 
particularly on how it sees the asio driver and inputs from the 1820m. 
Of course, until this time, our apology that we cannot confirm any 
information on the behaviour of the software like PatchMix DSP, unless 
we have released an specific support and update on Windows 7 OS.

We do not have an official release date, but are tracking the issues 
closely and will notify our users via our newsletter and website as soon
as we commit to a new release.

I've had loads of trouble with win 7 32 and 64, my 1616m seems ok but when a project gets heavy with tracks etc i would get loads of crashes and audio problems even after doing loads of tweaks, anyway when i ran dplat i was getting big latency spikes which i discovered was my nvidia card,so i bought a new one also a nvidia and installed the latest drivers and it was still the same, i then changed this card to an AGP and it was a total improvement, all spikes gone and 150-200 with latency, although things were better they weren't perfect so i installed XP sp3 and reinstalled everything and under XP i'm now getting 6-15 on latency checker and things have never been better, i'm working on a massive project at the moment with 50+ tracks and 100+ plugins and not had one glitch, i'm keeping this setup forever! (sp 8.53).You can keep w7.

So I'm just curious why you would need to have access to both devices. Why not let EMU and Patchmix handle everything? It's very convenient that way.

Because so many people have had trouble with Windows sharing their interface and changing sample rates or otherwise monopolizing the driver, and since I run SONAR at 48kHz with an external clock from my QS8, I've always preferred (and advised others) to give Windows the onboard sound, and reserve the 1820m for SONAR. This worked perfectly under WinXP. And it still works under Win7; I was just concerned that it wasn't quite as easy to ensure that Windows only uses the onboard sound.


My DAW is my all-purpose PC. Even if it didn't interfere with SONAR to have other apps sharing the 1820m, I don't want to have to turn on my keyboard, amp and monitors every time I want to listen audio from a web site. Plus the onboard sound system makes a good reference for how my mixes will sound to the average Soundclick visitor.

You have S/PDIF inputs sending to the virtual inputs that the Patchmix session presents to the O/S?

If I understand your question, yes. The SPDIF inputs appear on the Patchmix session and I hear sound and see levels, but there are no SPDIF inputs available in Sonar  - just Left Wave, Right Wave and Stereo.