Voicemeeter stops working with my Soundblaster X7 Audio

[Sniperfox47]

Hello wanted to see about some advice on what I may be missing with the setup of this to make it stable. I've been having some major issues with my Soundblaster X7 ever since installing this. Uninstalling both this and my X7 drivers and reinstalling hasn't helped.

The issue happens with both WDM and ASIO though presents slightly differently with each.

With WDM the audio output will continue to work fine but the audio input will turn red after a period of time and stop working. This can be fixed by selecting the audio input again or by Restarting Audio Engine. Automatically restart engine does not work.

With ASIO the audio output works okay initially. Audio input often doesn't work though occasionally it does work and once set seems to work until system restart. For both the audio will cut out and stop working after a period of time. Selecting a different audio input and switching back or restarting Audio Engine fixes it. Automatic restart engine makes the sound fuzz out for about 2 seconds, go dead for another 2-3 and then start back up.

Windows default audio device is set to one of the voicemeter inputs and all of my audio devices are set to 24 bit 48000 with all audio inputs being set to 2 channel and the audio output voicemeter is using being set to 5 channel. Buffer size for ASIO defaults to 2400 though that seems to cause issues for the virtual inputs and has really long latency so I swapped it to 960 via the driver config. Issue happens at both settings as well as 480.

I've also tried a firmware update in case that was the issue. Prior to the firmware update there were 8 ASIO inputs with 1/2 being the mic and they worked 99% of the time. Following the firmware update there are 2 ASIO inputs and they work maybe 10% of the time. The inputs instead seem to be getting tied to the line-in inputs

Things seem super borked in general with this setup and have been fighting with it for a couple months now. Wondering if anyone has any feedback or insight into what I might be doing wrong that I didn't think of.

Other config details available on request, not sure what you guys might need.

P.S. does anyone know of a tool to check ASIO input config and figure out why my inputs only occasionally work on current firmware?

[xcasxcursex]

I haven't used this but I came across it recently, it might be what you're after: https://github.com/jprjr/asioconfig

How does that sound card behave with other apps? This doesn't seem the kind of thing that's specific to voicemeeter. Especially after that nightmare firmware "update". Can you roll that back? Have you talked to creative support about it?

[Sniperfox47]

Outside voicemeeter everything seems to work great. If I just uninstall voicemeeter the audio works consistently and hasn't been given any issues. If the driver is having issues it's nothing that causes audible problems and even the suggested step of "record audio with the voicemeeter recorder and listen for artifacts" seems fine as far as my ears can hear.

And thanks for the link but that's just a tool to open the creative ASIO control panel. I found VBASIOTest from VB Audio here(https://forum.vb-audio.com/viewtopic.php?t=1204) which seems to give me a much better look at the ASIO info for my X7.

The issues seem exclusive to Voicemeeter. Disabling voicemeeter and just using the device directly works fine, even ASIO in audacity I've never had an issue with.

[xcasxcursex]

TL;DR at the bottom

This is pretty odd. I'm not bothering to list out basics because the things you've described (like your bitrates all being the same) tell me that you've already done your homework.

VM is not known to have any issues at all with any ASIO device that's otherwise working. You mentioned using other apps such as audacity to test, but was the device being used in the same manner (constantly and always recording and playing back on all channels)? I'm reaching for an explanation here and since I doubt it's the VM config (because you've already done the basics and then some), I'm wondering if the tests that showed you that the device is working, have shown you a false positive.... Of course, if things work fine everywhere but VM, it starts to suggest VM is the problem pretty strongly, but then again, what VM does (full-time record and play on all IO) is something uncommon in any other app, so it's easy to make everything else work but not VM, because VM is normally doing something different than everything else is.

Of course, even if you do manage to 'break' the sound card by testing in another app, the question still remains as to why it's doing that. I thought I best look around and see if there are any known issues with that card and well... It isn't good. Take a look around forums for fixes for crackling and popping. LOTS of complaints about this. Something that is heard as a tiny almost imperceptible crack in the audio, can be because it just dropped out for a moment, and that's enough to turn it red in VM for sure.

One possibility is if you're using an AMD motherboard without the latest AGESA BIOS fixes and are suffering from the USB dropout issues that plagued those boards? I'm really reaching here. I doubt it's this because I expect it would fail entirely, not just a few inputs (but perhaps this matches your description of the ASIO failures?)

Basically what I'm getting at here is that the chances of this being a bug in voicemeeter, which effects only you, are basically zero, so more likely, it's a problem somewhere else, and most likely, it's creative's famously unreliable drivers mixing with windows' famously unreliable audio stack and/or windows' famously unreliable USB stack (what a state of affairs!). I'm not trying to cop out here, if I had some hint that VM is the issue, I'd be looking there, but most signs still point to the card or windows or both.


TL;DR I'd either be testing other apps to confirm this really is VM-specific; some kind of DAW will be needed for this, to constantly record and play back on all IO... Or just take a look at the card and forget VM, because it's probably that. I personally prefer to test things and really figure out what's wrong before I try and fix it, but I did see a number of "you need to do this thing, or this card crackles all the time" threads, so you probably want to make sure that's all sorted anyway.

[lonbluster]

Basically what I'm getting at here is that the chances of this being a bug in voicemeeter, which effects only you, are basically zero, so more likely, it's a problem somewhere else, and most likely, it's creative's famously unreliable drivers mixing with windows' famously unreliable audio stack and/or windows' famously unreliable USB stack (what a state of affairs!). I'm not trying to cop out here, if I had some hint that VM is the issue, I'd be looking there, but most signs still point to the card or windows or both.

I reported the issue long ago in this forum, is not only a bug for him. I use Boss Ve-8 primary ASIO In1 with Composite B1, then AmplifiTT KS driver on In2, and a chinese Phonic Mixer with WDM on In3. I tried removing In3 for a while but In2 keeps disconnecting red.

With WDM the audio output will continue to work fine but the audio input will turn red after a period of time and stop working. This can be fixed by selecting the audio input again or by Restarting Audio Engine. Automatically restart engine does not work.

With ASIO the audio output works okay initially. Audio input often doesn't work though occasionally it does work and once set seems to work until system restart. For both the audio will cut out and stop working after a period of time. Selecting a different audio input and switching back or restarting Audio Engine fixes it. Automatic restart engine makes the sound fuzz out for about 2 seconds, go dead for another 2-3 and then start back up.

Same for me.
Also quite rarely I get the low and crackin volume on A1 Output, and the only way to correct it is:
-1 Shutdown VM
-2 Select the same main VM Output on Ableton for just a second, then reselect VM Virtual Asio
-3 Restart VM banana