Can't record MIDI anymore on Cubase...

[guy500]

A few days ago, I downloaded Cubase Pro 13 to try/learn, so I'm very new to all this.

At first, it seemed to work fine (even though I could do almost nothing on it yet), and I was trying to follow tutorials to learn it, but found that whenever I had Cubase open, I couldn't get any sound out of Youtube. ChatGPT "helpfully" advised me to go into my PC sound settings and prevent applications from taking exclusive control of my sound. That's when the problem started - I couldn't get any sound at all out of Cubase after that, though other PC sound was fine and the indicators within these programs showed that there was a signal being generated. Switching the PC sound settings back to where they were didn't work, even after several restarts.

Someone on a forum advised me to download and install ASIO4ALL drivers and try that. That helped a little. I switched the Cubase settings to this new driver, and now I can get sound out of Cubase (though I often need to fiddle around a lot in audio settings to get even that), but I still can’t record anything. It look like it's recording and it does show a signal, but when I stop the recording, there's nothing there.

And if I switch back to the General Low Latency drivers there is again no sound at all.

I’ve been playing around in the audio connections (which I don't really understand) trying to make it work, I see that it's impossible to get the same channels set for the Outputs and the Control Room, whichever driver I'm trying to set up. My soundcard is called "Live! 24 Bit External", but if I set the Outputs to "Live! 24 Bit External 1" and "Live! 24 Bit External 2", then the Control Room L/R are automatically set to 3/4, which doesn't seem to correspond to anything.

Can anyone please help me to get Cubase up and running so i can learn it???

 

[rob aylestone]

Do not use asio4all unless you really have to, but Cubase 11 onwards needs constant 'ownership' of the audio driver. It seems more happy on macs, but a lot is to do with the other app demanding access to the audio driver, and cubase allowing it and not being able to get it back. My mac system lets adobe audition load and run, but going back to cubase, I need to drop and reload the driver to restore sound. The control room MUST be set to the other outputs to work properly. On my system, the control room output is set to 1 and 2 and I have the other output set to 3 and 4. This works fine on my interface.

The dropping and reconnection is a bit of a pain, but as lots of people leave everything running in through to out, if it kept interrupting the flow, that would be annoying too.

The audio connections changes to match the interface you have, but the inspector (the left panel) is where the clever stuff is set up. The studio menu lets you select the ins and outs as you've found. Control room can be ignored if you wish - it just adds extra monitoring features and cleverer metering. Essentially, use the input tab to set stereo inputs (the default), so on my interface, I normally have stereo inputs set to 3 and 4. inputs one and two on my interface are normally empty. If I want a mono input for one mic in ch 1, I create a mono input, set this to 1, and leave the stereo pair as 3 and 4. When you go to your empty audio track, select in the inspector the input you wish to use - so for that channel 1 mic you connected, it shows as 'mono' or whatever I called channel 1 - it then records in mono. If you create a stereo track, then I set that to 3 and 4. If I connect the computer to my Midas M32/X32 I create in the input output tab, up to 32 mono channels, and then set 1 to 1, 2 to 2 to 32 to 32 - then record enabling the tracks, pressing record - records all the 32 channels from the desk. If you have an interface with multiple outs, you do the same thing in the output tab. That way, you can set up foldback or other sends to whatever outputs you have.

 

[guy500]

Thank you. Yes, it seems that I get sound out of cubase but if any other sound happens to come through my PC, then it cuts out in Cubase and I need to restart it.

I have only one sound card (an old Soundblaster Live External), but I really don't understand anything about how sound works on a PC. If I get another sound card will this somehow solve the problem? i thought I was solving in by downloading ASIO4ALL. But now that that's installed, I can't get any sound using the General Low Latency one that worked before....

 

[rob aylestone]

Drivers simply provide the connection between the controlling and generating parts - so think of it like a printer. You type in word then want to print on a brother. If you swap the brother for an Epson, word doesn't know it exists and even if it did, it speaks the wrong language. If you have a PC and a Focusrite interface, Focusrite produce a purpose designed driver to take the computers audio data and convert it into focusrite language in as quick a time as possible, so there is no delay (Latency). Sometimes, like my old Lexicon Omega interface, Lexicon say tough, we have a windows 7 driver, but it's old so we won't bother with writing a new windows 10 one. I have a windows 10 computer than doesn't know how to talk to the Lexicon! Asio4all write a driver routine that speaks multiple languages in a dialect the Lexicon can understand - but it is speaking in junior school vocabulary, so most works, but clever stuff is just, well, too clever. Asio4all takes time to translate the computer speak to interface speak, and you get big delays - BUT - it works. The soundblaster card is now like a teenager trying to talk to a great grandparent - vocabulary so far apart it struggles, plus old soundcards and interfaces were never designed to do what is now normal. Modern computers might be able to listen to multiple sources at the same time so cubase is playing back fine, but you accidentally hit play on spotify - and it's able to merge them to play together, but another computer may not have the ability to do this and switches. Adobe and Steinberg both like to be 'in charge' of drivers, so switching to adobe audition usually works on my system, but going back to cubase, adobe sort of hangs onto the driver.

General advice then. Avoid asio4all unless you have no alternative - it is a bandage, not a cure. Old sound interfaces or internal cards limit you even more because they cannot handle shifts in clock speeds like modern ones. 44.1 to 48K can just wreck things. Current and modern devices work better with windows 10 and 11. Devices designed in the windows 7 era are going to annoy recently updated apps. This is perfectly normal. Steinberg constantly tinker with cubase, so do adobe with their software. Expecting old gear with old drivers or bodge drivers is never going to be smooth sailing.

 

[guy500]

Drivers simply provide the connection between the controlling and generating parts - so think of it like a printer. You type in word then want to print on a brother. If you swap the brother for an Epson, word doesn't know it exists and even if it did, it speaks the wrong language. If you have a PC and a Focusrite interface, Focusrite produce a purpose designed driver to take the computers audio data and convert it into focusrite language in as quick a time as possible, so there is no delay (Latency). Sometimes, like my old Lexicon Omega interface, Lexicon say tough, we have a windows 7 driver, but it's old so we won't bother with writing a new windows 10 one. I have a windows 10 computer than doesn't know how to talk to the Lexicon! Asio4all write a driver routine that speaks multiple languages in a dialect the Lexicon can understand - but it is speaking in junior school vocabulary, so most works, but clever stuff is just, well, too clever. Asio4all takes time to translate the computer speak to interface speak, and you get big delays - BUT - it works. The soundblaster card is now like a teenager trying to talk to a great grandparent - vocabulary so far apart it struggles, plus old soundcards and interfaces were never designed to do what is now normal. Modern computers might be able to listen to multiple sources at the same time so cubase is playing back fine, but you accidentally hit play on spotify - and it's able to merge them to play together, but another computer may not have the ability to do this and switches. Adobe and Steinberg both like to be 'in charge' of drivers, so switching to adobe audition usually works on my system, but going back to cubase, adobe sort of hangs onto the driver.

General advice then. Avoid asio4all unless you have no alternative - it is a bandage, not a cure. Old sound interfaces or internal cards limit you even more because they cannot handle shifts in clock speeds like modern ones. 44.1 to 48K can just wreck things. Current and modern devices work better with windows 10 and 11. Devices designed in the windows 7 era are going to annoy recently updated apps. This is perfectly normal. Steinberg constantly tinker with cubase, so do adobe with their software. Expecting old gear with old drivers or bodge drivers is never going to be smooth sailing.

Wow - thank you for that explanation. I think what you're saying is that a driver is simply something that provides the most efficient communication between 2 pieces of hardware. Each piece of hardware would optimally have its own driver.

That makes sense and is a great simple explanation. I'm struggling to see how to apply this to what I see in various different places. In my sound devices settings, the only ones I see as "ready" are the monitor audio (which I discard as it's terrible) and "Speaker", which seems to be linked to my Sound Blaster Live 24-bit External. as well as a couple of SPDif ones (I'm not sure what they are). One is "Digital Audio (S/PDIF)" which is linked to a Microsoft high Definition Audio Device (is that my inbuild soundcard???) and the other is SPDIF-Out, which is also linked to the Soundblaster. However, when I go to Cubase, the options available are only General low Latency Driver (which doesn't work at all anymore), and the ASIO4ALL, which is the only one that works, and it goes through channels 1 and 2 (the only channels that seem to work - does that relate to the speakers plugged into it?) of the Soundblaster.

On the original problem, I found that switching to a different midi controller actually enabled me to record again, but as soon as there is any sound through the computer from anywhere else, Cubase sound stops altogether and I need to restart Cubase to resume working in it.

I'm sure this is all relating to what we are talking about here, but I'm not really clear how. I know I'll probably need to get a new audio interface, but I'm not sure what exactly that will do and how to route it to avoid these problems. My biggest confusion is why the General Low Latency driver that was originally working in Cubase has now stopped working altogether.

Sorry for being a confused beginner - I think I might be driving myself round in knots....

 

[rob aylestone]

I think things will get much simpler when your computer sees a modern device - but you've got the basics. Things like cubase expect a certain level of equipment being 'there'. generic and asio4all are catch-all solutions. Like those universal phone chargers with cables that fit everything but fail to charge anything!
S/Pdif is is Sony/Philips Digital InterFace. This uses fibre optics to transfer the data, not a copper or aluminium cable. S/Pdif is basically a two channel system using little square connectors that have a red light at the transmit end. The same connector was used for ADAT multitrack, but it's 8 track and not the same thing. Some interfaces connect this way - there is a Behringer multi-track one, but your sound card (if it has the optical socket) is just for connection to a few CD players or DAT machines - long since ancient. You are correct - the rubbishy old £5 of circuitry on the mother board is called High Definition, but never is! Cubase is just finding audio drivers and offering them to you. It's worth checking the website for your audio interface - you never know there might be a proper driver hidden there - if so, grab it and try it.

 

[musicturtle]

I do not know if you are still working on this problem but here is some info.

Go under the studio tab>studio setup and click the box that I have circled here.

This will allow you to have sound from other sources like youtube or media player.

Then you can pop right back to Cubase without having to shut it down every time.

 

[guy500]

I do not know if you are still working on this problem but here is some info.

Go under the studio tab>studio setup and click the box that I have circled here.

This will allow you to have sound from other sources like youtube or media player.

Then you can pop right back to Cubase without having to shut it down every time.


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Thanks very much for coming back on this. Fortunately, it's all sorted now, but i appreciate the response and hope it will help others.