Reaper can't open audio device on WIn10/Parallels on iMac

[grimmer]

I am attempting to get Reaper working on my iMac/High Sierra but running on Windows 10 via Parallels. For brevity I will skip the details of why, and why not Bootcamp...

For most audio applications like SoundForge, the Parallels audio device passthrough works fine - I see Parallels Audio Controller in the Win10 Device Manager with no issues, and the Windows Sound configuration plays test audio without any issues.

The problem I'm having is that as soon as I launch Reaper I get "Error initializing ASIO Driver". If I go to the Device tab in Reaper preferences I see only one option, which is "Yamaha Steinberg USB ASIO" which is correct for my UR-22 mkii audio interface. But the "ASIO Configuration..." button does not appear to do anything (no new window or tab is launched when I click it) and whenever I try to play any audio I keep getting the same "Error initializing ASIO driver"...

So the basic audio chain is working fine for SoundForge and other Win10 applications on top of Parallels/iMac, but it doesn't work with Reaper. Is this a known issue, or is there some way to fix it? I've already tried changing all the parameters that seem relevant (e.g. ignoring or not ignoring ASIO reset messages etc), but nothing works!

Any help here would be much appreciated! Thanks!

[grimmer]

It turns out that the problem was with the ASIO audio system. If instead I choose "DirectSound" as the Audio System, and then switch the I/O from "Primary Sound Driver" to "Speakers (Parallels Audio Controller)..." then I hear audio!

I'm curious as to what the difference is between this setup and the ASIO audio system, especially if it affects performance. I have decent horsepower (4GHz Core i7, 32GB 1867MHz DDR3), but latency is always a potential issue...

[ivansc]

Do we assume there is also a reason why you dont simply use the native Mac version.

[grimmer]

Originally Posted by ivansc

Do we assume there is also a reason why you dont simply use the native Mac version.

In the past I ran on PCs and my main DAW was Cubase 8.5 Pro. I was committed to Windows forehistorical reasons and because of SoundForge and some plugins that were (at that time) windows-only. When I got my iMac I also went for Bootcamp rather than Parallels or VMWare because of efficiency and I didn't need to swap between Windows and OS X.

Then I had a disaster with Bootcamp - an Apple Bootcamp graphics driver update caused my WIndows 10 to no longer boot, and restoring the Bootcamp partition from backup not only failed to restore the Windows partition but also trashed my OS X boot partition so I ended up wiping the entire disk and starting again from scratch!

Now that most things are available on OS X too, I only need to run windows for those plugins (e.g. IL Vocodex) that are still windows-only and to save having to buy SoundForge again for Mac OS (they have different versions for the different platforms). For Cubase 8.5 Pro , NI Komplete and all Waves plugins I have now switched to being native OS X since their licensing scheme allows me to switch without financial penalties. But this means I need to be able to easily switch from OS X to Windows and back without rebooting, hence Parallels rather than Bootcamp now (also because I don't want the same wipeout disaster with Bootcamp that I just had!)

So my iMac/Parallels/Windows/Reaper plan is just to use it when I need to do things on Windows that I can't do on OS X...

[ivansc]

Feel for you. What a pain!