[SOLVED] Voicemeeter going full ASIO = problem

[AtmanActive]

Hi Vincent,

First of all, thank you for your wonderful work on Voicemeeter series.
Your work is inspiring new hope in the world of windows audio.

Now, I have a specific use case where Voicemeeter (any) is failing me from day one.
In other words, I could never ever make this setup work without audio crackling.

What I want to do is to have my DAW (Reaper or Cubase) use Voicemeeter Virtual ASIO to talk to Voicemeeter AND at the same time, have Voicemeeter use my ASIO card for it's inputs and outputs. The goal here is to have the smallest possible latency, for music studio recording purposes where low latency is paramount.

When I try to send DAW via ASIO to Voicemeeter and then set Voicemeeter to use MME mode of that card, then it is working correctly. No crackling, the sound is clean, all fine, except, the buffer is then at 1024 samples and that makes it lag too much to be usable in a music recording context.

On the other hand, when I set Voicemeeter to use ASIO exclusively, then, Voicemeeter alone is working just fine, no problems whatsoever, and ASIO buffer can go very low which provides good latency for music recording. But, as soon as I try to send my DAW's audio into Voicemeeter via Voicemeeter Virtual ASIO, that audio connection starts crackling and I can't fix it no matter what. I tried all different combinations of buffers and the only difference it makes is how often the crackling is heard. The bigger the buffer, the more apart in time crackling noise is. It sounds like it can't sync to ASIO buffer no matter which buffer size, which leads me to believe it is some kind of a bug, rather than underwhelmed real-time CPU cycles.

I am testing this on a machine with the latest generation i7 CPU and usually I have more than enough CPU power for anything music-related. In Reaper alone I can drive hundreds of channels with hundreds of VST effects on low ASIO buffers and it is running extremely smoothly. I was even able to use ASIO Synchronous Audio Router to record both audio and fullHD screen capture to Open Broadcaster Software with no hiccups whatsoever. The only ever crackling audio problem I have is when I try the above described Voicemeeter plus ASIO ins(mic)+outs(headphones)+virtual(DAW).

Now I am wondering: did you ever have any such experience? Is that combination working for you? Or is this something that is well known and not supported by Voicemeeter?

Thank you.

Keep up the good work!

Cheers!

[angusrohan]

I am having the exact same problem. I haven't tried SAR but i may switch from Voicemeeter to SAR at some point as I keep hearing from people that SAR has far fewer issues.

It looks like Voicemeeter's ASIO conflicts heavily with other USB ASIO devices. I finally was able to find these articles on the VB-audio forum that document the problem I've been experiencing very accurately. This "callback timing" problem is likely the source of all of my issues. If SAR can bypass this, then I will likely give that a try next weekend.

viewtopic.php?t=484
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=506

[AtmanActive]

Thank you for sharing this.

Indeed, I have Focusrite Scarlet 6i6 2nd Gen.

In the meantime I tested ReaRouteASIO to connect Reaper and Cubase and I got exactly the same results.
This definitely points in the same direction: all ASIO ends on Focusrite.

By the way, Voicemeeter doesn't even recognize ReaRouteASIO, it doesn't offer that interface in the list of interfaces.

But, what puzzles me is, how then, all ASIO software (DAWs) have no trouble syncing to Focusrite and other USB audio devices and work with them with very low latency, no problems whatsoever. Even Voicemeeter can use Focusrite in ASIO mode in low latency successfully. The only situation when this problem occurs is when Voicemeeter tries to "relay" that ASIO connection via it's Virtual ASIO input.
... and also right now when I tried the more-or-less same thing with ReaRouteASIO.

Weird.

I'll keep digging...

[AtmanActive]

By the way, I also tried Reaper -> SAR -> Voicemeeter and no go.
Voicemeeter recognizes devices created by SAR but it can't open them.
An error dialog pops up complaining about unsupported sample rate or bit rate.
As I said, Reaper -> SAR -> Open Broadcaster Software works perfectly.

[AtmanActive]

Success!!!

Following up on this thread of thought where Focusrite's badly programmed ASIO drivers could be the problem, I pulled up my dusty old Centrance Mic Port that was lying around forgotten in a drawer and installed their ASIO drivers (I had to install "Legacy" v7.4.19 drivers as latest v8.0.2 wouldn't work at all) and YES, it works like a charm.

Voicemeeter Potato opened Centrance ASIO, allowed me to setup inputs and outputs and when Reaper connected to Voicemeeter Virtual ASIO it worked straight away, no crackling, no dropouts, nothing. Just for kicks I tried playing around with ASIO buffer - latency, and was able to go as low as 1ms! True 1ms where my Centrance is giving me direct monitoring, then, Voicemeeter is giving me it's loop monitoring, and finally, Reaper is giving me it's loop monitoring and all I can hear is nice thin flange. No echo, no slapback. No perceivable latency. At the same time, Reaper is playing some MIDI notes just to be sure there are no dropouts whatsoever.

So, yes, Vincent was right all along. It turns out, not all ASIO drivers are born equal.

Thank you Angus.
Thank you Vincent.
You rock!

[praisetracks]

Success!!!

Following up on this thread of thought where Focusrite's badly programmed ASIO drivers could be the problem, I pulled up my dusty old Centrance Mic Port that was lying around forgotten in a drawer and installed their ASIO drivers (I had to install "Legacy" v7.4.19 drivers as latest v8.0.2 wouldn't work at all) and YES, it works like a charm.

So, yes, Vincent was right all along. It turns out, not all ASIO drivers are born equal.

Thank you, Angus.
Thank you, Vincent.
You rock!

I just experience something similar. I was trying to use a Scarlett 4i4 3rd gen but with Voicemeeter it was unusable even at higher buffer settings. it would just crackle and stutter. I then swapped it out for a PreSonus Studio 6|8 and even with buffers set at 128 things work very smoothly and getting very high-quality audio performance working with OBS Studio.

This is on a brand new i9 9900k build so it was very disappointing that the Focusrite drivers still performed this poorly with Voicemeeter.

I will reiterate the thanks for the work you have done with Voicemeeter, it makes things so enjoyable for those who are working on live streaming and such. There is not another application I have found that does this as efficiently as Voicemeeter.
All the best,
Simeon

[AtmanActive]

Thank you @praisetracks for confirming that Presonus ASIO drivers work correctly.
Guided by that info we just tested a brand new PreSonus Studio 24c 2x2 and it works great.
No crackling, no problems, very low latency achievable.

Cheers!