How to realize multitrack signal playback in different sound cards separately

[taoz77576848]

Hi,

In daily use of Audition, we need to play different signals in a multitrack section file through different sound cards.  mine is Audition CC 2018

pls contact me *personal contact details removed - Mod*, thanks in advance.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_ · Accepted solution]

For PCs:

It's not possible to do this with an ASIO driver - the system was designed by Steinberg so that it would only address one device - nothing to do with Audition at all, that's their limitation and any software using it is forced to abide by it. The reason is that it punches a hole clean through most of the OS, and consequently performs rather better. It works well with Audition, as Audition has an ASIO-based engine.

Because of the way most other device drivers work, I think that there's only going to be one way to do this, and that's to use ASIO4ALL, which will allow you to aggregate more than one device, but the whole setup will have higher latency. For playback only, that's unlikely to be a problem. ASIO4ALL is free, and relatively easy to set up. It also has good diagnostics, so you can tell what's happening and whether you have any problems you need to address.

For Macs

My understanding is that Macs aggregate audio devices anyway, so it's a matter of getting them connected up and the system configured correctly, I guess - I don't have one so I can't tell you absolutely what you have to do.

[taoz77576848]

Hi SteveG

I have installed ASIO4ALL in a compatible mode, however, I can not find ASIO4ALL when setting the driver. there is only one called ASIO Fireface USB, which is an external soundcard driver.

I also can not find ASIO related driver in device manager.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

If you can't find the driver, then it isn't installed correctly. I'm not quite sure why it's misbehaving - normally it's pretty benign. I just updated it on this W10 laptop without difficulty. Also I don't think it will work with any Audition version below 2, although I'd have to check on that - the ASIO engine was introduced around this time. You can download Audition 3 though (look in the FAQs) and it will certainly work with that. To see everything available in ASIO4ALL you may have to open its control panel and enable a few things...

[taoz77576848]

Hi SteveG,

1. what is the version of your ASIO4ALL? can you share me the download link?

2. after installing the ASIO4ALL driver, we can find the driver in audition even though we have not open its control panel and enable some functions?

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

2.14 - top of this page: ASIO4ALL - Universal ASIO Driver For WDM Audio

[taoz77576848]

so sad it seems that I can not see the page.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Where on earth are you?

[taoz77576848]

Hi SteveG,

thanks for your reply, now I have got a ASIO4ALL and it is numerated in audition. but the problem is still there, I can only select one sound card to playback despite i check ASIO4ALL

[taoz77576848]

Hi SteveG， I have make different sound cards numerated in audition now, after I enable them in ASIO4ALL control panel.

However, another problem appears, I can not play anything If I put audition hardware to ASIO4ALL. when I change it to others like NME or WASAPI, I can play whatever i like.

below is my configuration in ASIOALL, what should I do now if I want to paly the music via different sound cards?

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Because each device is having to use its Windows driver (this is what ASIO4ALL is converting everything into - Windows sound), you have to make sure that all your devices are enabled correctly in the Windows 'Sounds' page in the control panel.

Just to make sure it really works,  I used the internal Realtek output on this laptop, and added a MixPre-D as a second device. Fed individual tracks from Audition directly to both of them, and they both worked fine, simultaneously. The ASIO4ALL control panel looks like this:

But I did have to make sure that all of the devices were available - as in the 'Use this device' setting...

[taoz77576848]

Hi SteveG,

it's OK now, but there is another problem, it seems that it ASIO does not support one of my sound card. with the other two sound card, it works well. so I think I'd better find out what is wrong with this certain card. (if I check this card separately and also with ASIO option, it can not work. it only works when I choose other type of sound card).

on the other hand, I have put the buffer to 2048, the sound fame is fluent but there is a pose between different frames of sound. if I put the buffer smaller, the sound is not fluent any more, have you ever encountered this issue, what can I do to address it?

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

taoz77576848  wrote

Hi SteveG,

it's OK now, but there is another problem, it seems that it ASIO does not support one of my sound card. with the other two sound card, it works well. so I think I'd better find out what is wrong with this certain card. (if I check this card separately and also with ASIO option, it can not work. it only works when I choose other type of sound card).

on the other hand, I have put the buffer to 2048, the sound fame is fluent but there is a pose between different frames of sound. if I put the buffer smaller, the sound is not fluent any more, have you ever encountered this issue, what can I do to address it?

Firstly, you're not relying on ASIO for this scenario to work - you're relying on ASIO4ALL to use the normal windows driver for your card, so whether it works with ASIO is moot. And not all sound devices have ASIO drivers anyway - many cheaper ones don't.

The only solution to the buffering situation is to upgrade your machine, as it's the performance of it as a whole that influences this. Often this is caused by slow disc drives, but it's also made worse by poor motherboard performance (strangely enough, it's not often a processor issue).

[ryclark]

And very likely all the problems would be overcome if you were to use a proper multi channel audio interface with manufacturers ASIO drivers rather than trying to bodge several different soundcards together to playback multitrack audio I'm afraid. After all each individual soundcard was designed and expected to be used on it's own, where as a multichannel USB interface for example is intended to play several synchronised audio data streams all at once.

[taoz77576848]

Hi SteveG,

thanks for your reply, so according to you, the problem lies in the the ASIO driver.

I have downloaded the ASIO4ALL driver, but I also encountered a problem when I install this driver, it displays an error like below. my laptop is Win10.

[taoz77576848]

I successfully installed the ASIO4ALL in the compatible mode. but when I start the audition, it is the same. only one sound card can be set to play. I still can not play different track in different card.

I have an old version of audition, maybe 1.0, it can support different sound card playback.