After Effects takes exclusive control of Audio Driver

[Red Point]

I need After Effects to release my audio driver when AE is minimized. Yet there is no where in the preference to check the box "Release Audio Driver when in Background". I need to watch youtube while working or have occasional Video Chats. What is strange, I explicitly set Windows 10 not to allow apps to take exclusive control of my audio driver, yet AE does not seem to respect it and overide Windows 10. If there is one thing I really cant stand is when developers do not respect MY SETTINGS. Not sure why it is not possible to set this in AE, when in any other app it is possible. Any ideas?

[Mylenium]

You have not provided any info about your audio hardware or actual settings, so we really can't tell you anything.

Mylenium

[Red Point]

I am using an UR-824 Yamaha Audio card, which is controlled by an ASIO device class audio driver. I am using Windows 10 and AE 2022 (latest update). 

[Byron Cortez]

I'm not sure what you need but After Effects has in its preferences a tab called "Audio Hardware" for the audio settings where you can select an Output, but it remains selected even if you put it in the background. However, if you open a browser to watch YouTube that should not interfere with the output of the system because it is independent.

[Red Point]

You might not be familiar with the intricacy of windows audio drivers, but there are different device classes and hence also some differences in how the different audio drivers behave. Most people will be using standard WDM and MME drivers under windows and will therefor most likely not notice any "driver release" issues. The third audio standard for windows sound drivers is ASIO, which is used by professional sound studios and serious DSP apps. This is a mission critical audio driver that by default locks the audio device to a specific app.

In order to to maintain multitasking capability across apps while using an ASIO setup, there needs to be a checkbox in settings under "Audio Hardware" that will read something like "Release audio driver when app is in the background". This will keep the mission critical aspect when the app is in the foreground, but will release the driver to other apps when Windwos recognizes when the app is in the background. This pertains specifically to ASIO device class drivers and hardware. 

For some reason, Adobe has failed to add this option in After Effects, which is bad practise for ASIO and any PRO setup. Any sound professional using AE in their studio will most likely run into this same issue, as they will most likely also use ASIO drivers. Hope that further clarifies my questions. 

[OussK]

I never face this issue, I always use AE while I listen to music no problem at all, and the good things you can set the audio interface you want to use for AE, example if you comment on a Bluetooth device you can let AE use that device only, really as Mylenium said you should give us more info about your audio hardware

[Red Point]

That is becaue you are most likely not using an ASIO device class setup / driver under Window 10 or 11. Cheers!

[Red Point]

I am using a UR-824 Yamaha Audio card which is using an ASIO device class audio driver. ASIO is a device class developed by Steinberg (=owned by Yamaha). These are professional mission critical audio drivers used in DSP software and are supported in most pro apps utilizing DSP (like AE) and these drivers usually take exclusive control of the audio device they control to prevent any interference (hence mission critical operations). For this reasons, apps supporting ASIO drivers (like Adobe After Effects) need to offer the possibility to release audio drivers when the app is in the background (this possibility is present in most DAWs and DSP software apps I have ever worked with). 

Usually, there is a checkbox that you can tick that will read something along the lines of "Release Audio Driver when Application is in the background". 

Since this is missing in AE 2022, anyone who uses an ASIO setup (which is pretty much any sound studio) will not be able to use other apps in a multitasking setup, eg to watch a Youtube video tutorial alongside AE being open, which is a real nuissance. 

The only workaround I found: I need to go into the AE settings > "Audio Hardware" and manually switch the device class from ASIO to MME. I need to do this everytime I switch to my video tutorials. Which defeats the purpose of using pro audio with pro software. If anyone using ASIO has another workaround, please let me know. 

Adobe should really fix this. For any studio using ASIO audio, this is is a real no-go.