ASIO4ALL - Output gets choppy every 50-seconds or so...

[Day-0]

Hey All,

I am a complete beginner when it comes to recording. I have been meaning to get into this for a while, but I had far too many issues getting setup on my laptop before my recent PC build (latency, sound quality, and lack of know-how overall). Now that I have all the necessary gear and software (at least I think I do) I decided to try out Reaper.

I'm using ASIO4ALL as the driver for my soundcard (that's what it is... right?) as the driver for my interface does not allow me to route the output (or monitoring) to my headphones (which go through a usb powered headphone amp). I decided to use ASIO4ALL as it seems common in the forums and common on Youtube tutorials.

Here is the issue: Although ASIO4ALL gives me the option to select my headphone amp as an output, once I set this up in the driver's software and in Reaper's preferences (by clicking "ok") I get around 50 seconds of clean recording and monitoring... then it gets choppy.

I can almost "reset" this problem just by going to Reaper's preferences and clicking "OK" but then the issue occurs again. It seems to only be an issue with the output, as my recording sounds fine when I "reset" the issue to check my recording.

I thought the issue may have been caused by buffer size (again, I'm new to this) so I played around with the settings in the driver's software but nothing seems to have worked.

Gear: Passive Bass -> Warwick LWA1000 class "D" amp head -> DI out from amp into Behringer U-Phoria UMC202HD interface -> USB into PC I/O backplate.

Computer specs: WIN10 Pro (64-bit), Intel i5-7500 CPU, 8GB RAM, >100GB avaliable on SSD, and plenty of space on my 1TB HDD.

Hopefully this is detailed enough for someone to figure this out. Any and all help is appreciated

Regards,
Day-0

[drumphil]

The problem is that you are trying to use two audio devices at the same time, and they don't have a word clock link between them.

If your headphone amp has analog inputs as well as usb, then run a line from the output on the behringer interface to your headphone amp.

Or just plug your headphones directly in to the UMC202HD.

Connecting multiple audio devices together, that weren't designed to be connected in such a manner is not something that can be trivially made to work.

ASIO4ALL can aggregate devices, but it is up to you to keep the devices in sync, and if they don't have word clock IO, then they will always drift out of sync.


Also, UMC202HD has its own native AISO driver. Asio4All is only really useful for devices without native asio drivers, or for aggregating devices that don't natively support aggregation, but do have wordclock IO to allow such aggregation to work. Asio4All works as a wrapper for WDM audio drivers on devices that don't have native ASIO drivers. It presents the audio interface to reaper as if it has an asio driver, and translates to WDM which basically all audio interfaces support.

So, use the proper drivers, and don't try and run two audio devices at the same time.

[Day-0]

Thanks for the reply drumphil!

The reason I thought I needed my headphone amp was that the headphones have a high ohm rating and I guessed that the Berhinger's direct monitor output would not be strong powerful enough to drive the headphones. This is not the case.

So the solution seems to just be to use the direct monitor output from the interface for my headphones, and to use its driver to route the signal from reaper to the interface. This seems to be a good solution!

Thanks a lot for the reply once again.

[drumphil]

If your headphone amp has analog inputs you can use it if you want, taking a analog line out of the UMC202HD, but if the sound from the internal headphone amp is fine, then it might not be worth the hassle.

Also, direct monitoring isn't the only way to work. If the interface works reliably at low latency settings, you can monitor through reaper with eq and effects or whatever.