1 Topic by fracha33 (edited by fracha33 2024-01-08 14:41:22)

  • Registered: 2024-01-08
  • Posts: 2

Topic: RME Fireface UCX II - Windows 11 issue

Hi,

I purchase a new PC with windows 11 who I built myself, and my RME UCX II freeze with a certain amount of time.

With my last computer, everything was working perfectly.

My new computer work very well no issue with it, and I got the newest driver from RME... and I don't know what to seek right now.

I wonder if some audio driver from my graphic card or PC Built-in could affect the RME but even if a disable those driver I got the same issue with some amount of time.

What I can do ? Something I should take a look ? USB port could be problematic? How can I take a look on it ?

How can I solve this issue ?

I'm working on Cubase and Adobe Premiere Pro as full-time job, so that's really problematic to me.

Thanks a lot !
(sorry for my none perfect english skill)

  • Registered: 2019-10-01
  • Posts: 675

Re: RME Fireface UCX II - Windows 11 issue

Hello!

You can try this:
Device Manager -> Usb Controllers -> the Hub where the UCX II is connected to -> Right click on it -> Properties -> Power Management -> Uncheck the "Allow Windows to turn off this device" option.

That 's the path on Win10,btw, but I don't think it's different on Win11 !

RME Gear: Digiface USB, HDSP 9632

3 Reply by artstr_reg (edited by artstr_reg 2024-01-13 13:32:19)

  • Registered: 2019-01-18
  • Posts: 12

Re: RME Fireface UCX II - Windows 11 issue

fracha33 wrote:

Hi,
I purchase a new PC with windows 11 who I built myself, and my RME UCX II freeze with a certain amount of time.

Same problem, but it worked fine on my Windows 11 PC for half a year or so. After some Windows 11 OS update in December, however, this problem began in my setup, where UCX II WDM devices spontaneously stop working. At the outset, it was pretty bad - this was happening every 1–3 hours. After I reinstalled the RME USB driver (last installed in summer) and updated the UCX II firmware to the latest version (was one number behind), these freezes became less frequent. They still happen at least once per day, so a fix would be appreciated.

I have investigated Windows event logs, and there's nothing simultaneous that I can spot through them. From checking Windows sound settings when this happens, there might be two separate failure modes happening here - WDM devices stay connected, e.g., in the device manager, but sound stops going through them, and WDM devices simply disconnect from the system.

MetalHeadKeys wrote:

Hello!
You can try this:
Device Manager -> Usb Controllers -> the Hub where the UCX II is connected to -> Right click on it -> Properties -> Power Management -> Uncheck the "Allow Windows to turn off this device" option.

That 's the path on Win10,btw, but I don't think it's different on Win11 !

The device remains powered on at all times, as it's powered, and host USB socket is on motherboard of a desktop PC running from wall power. This was not necessary prior.

  • Registered: 2019-01-18
  • Posts: 12

Re: RME Fireface UCX II - Windows 11 issue

One more piece to the puzzle. My sound just died due to this, and checking Windows sound devices all WDM devices are present. Simply disconnecting and reconnecting the USB cable did bring things to normal, without power-cycling the device. That said, a running application using it did lose the sound before I disconnected the cable, so something must've happened to the WDM device the application was using.

5 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2024-01-13 13:40:47)

  • ramses
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Re: RME Fireface UCX II - Windows 11 issue

Maybe your energy settings ... What energy profile do you have in use?
Check in the enhanced settings whether selected power saving for USB is disabled.

I disabled it for all power profiles.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13

6 Reply by artstr_reg (edited by artstr_reg 2024-01-13 13:49:29)

  • Registered: 2019-01-18
  • Posts: 12

Re: RME Fireface UCX II - Windows 11 issue

ramses wrote:

Maybe your energy settings ... What energy profile do you have in use?
Check in the enhanced settings whether selected power saving for USB is disabled.

I disabled it for all power profiles.

That was my thought, but I had dismissed it initially as I have set power settings to "Best performance" in the new Settings menu, thinking that it's the equivalent of the old "High Performance" plan.

https://i.imgur.com/ZCOHJgK.png

However, I'm reinvestigating this now. Curiously, going through Control Panel → Hardware and Sound → Power Options shows that my power plan there is "Balanced", rather than "High performance".

https://i.imgur.com/NtYMgQr.png

Going through power options/advanced settings, the plans there have USB selective suspend setting enabled, including "High Performance" plan, so I'll go and disable that now, and set up a reminder to post in a few days if this has helped. I don't necessarily recall myself actually disabling selective USB suspend when I assembled this machine last year, so I think what may have happened is a December Windows 11 update changing system logic for suspending UCX II - assuming this works.

7 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2024-01-13 14:32:53)

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Re: RME Fireface UCX II - Windows 11 issue

- Is it a PC?
- Which mainboard/CPU?
- Windows 11 with kern isolation security feature enabled or a custom installation with Rufus to disable all that performance sucking "crap".

Can you please put such information about your HW into the signature, that this does not need to be asked over and over again? Thanks.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13
  • Registered: 2024-01-08
  • Posts: 2

Re: RME Fireface UCX II - Windows 11 issue

MetalHeadKeys wrote:

Hello!

You can try this:
Device Manager -> Usb Controllers -> the Hub where the UCX II is connected to -> Right click on it -> Properties -> Power Management -> Uncheck the "Allow Windows to turn off this device" option.

That 's the path on Win10,btw, but I don't think it's different on Win11 !


That's seems to work to me since I've done your solution ! Thanks you smile

9 Reply by artstr_reg (edited by artstr_reg 2024-01-13 23:19:20)

  • Registered: 2019-01-18
  • Posts: 12

Re: RME Fireface UCX II - Windows 11 issue

ramses wrote:

- Is it a PC?
- Which mainboard/CPU?
- Windows 11 with kern isolation security feature enabled or a custom installation with Rufus to disable all that performance sucking "crap".

Can you please put such information about your HW into the signature, that this does not need to be asked over and over again? Thanks.

I'd don't have my HW info provided since literally nothing in my HW has changed, and I've run UCX II on it with zero issues for about 6 months of daily 8+ hour use last year - the problem appeared after a Windows update, with no hardware or firmware changes taking place. Since there were no major computer software changes either, and since I've tested that UCX II itself works fine, OS behaviour is by far the most likely explanation

As I mentioned earlier, it's a PC. AMD 7950X3D, ASRock X670 Taichi, and a standard Windows 11 Pro 22H2 22621.3007 installation with no whacky modifications or "optimizations".

Either way, disabling USB selective suspend was not it, the problem remains. Going to try modifying the USB controller properties, I guess, after I figure which of like 20 I have in the device manager is the relevant one.

Upd: Got it, let's see if this works.

10 Reply by MC

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Re: RME Fireface UCX II - Windows 11 issue

If that happens again check the Settings dialog for USB errors.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

  • Registered: 2019-01-18
  • Posts: 12

Re: RME Fireface UCX II - Windows 11 issue

MC wrote:

If that happens again check the Settings dialog for USB errors.

Happened again, with "USB selective suspend" disabled and "Allow Windows to turn off this device" disabled on the parent USB hub, and its parent USB controller, for the UCX II. There are USB errors this time indeed (I think I've also had a case without them, but I might be misremembering that).

https://i.imgur.com/2uNyIsD.png

Going by section 40.3 of the manual, I've moved another USB device that was on the same controller and hub to a different one, to isolate UCX II, and doubled the latency to 128 samples.

  • Registered: 2019-01-18
  • Posts: 12

Re: RME Fireface UCX II - Windows 11 issue

To follow up on the above, I've reproduced the problem with every buffer size available above 64 samples. The only change that I've observed is that the error counter changes from 1/17 to 1/16 at higher buffer values. Does the UCX II, by chance, log the specific errors in some way that I can use for more detailed troubleshooting?

13 Reply by MC

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Re: RME Fireface UCX II - Windows 11 issue

The 'bigger buffers won't work' was a known issue on AMD systems years ago, USB hardware support at that time wasn't the best. I am astonished to see this again. Did you try to deinstall the latest Windows updates? That is usually easy to do, but quite hidden. Go to Windows Update, History, scroll all the way down to Uninstall Updates ( the English names might differ a bit).

Apart from that - you did not install Sonarworks at the time the issues started?

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

14 Reply by artstr_reg (edited by artstr_reg 2024-01-22 22:49:58)

  • Registered: 2019-01-18
  • Posts: 12

Re: RME Fireface UCX II - Windows 11 issue

I did unfortunately not think of uninstalling Windows updates around the time this began happening, and it appears that the update which coincided with the appearance of this problem (underlined) may not be available for removal.

https://i.imgur.com/S9aNbrD.png

I'll remove what updates are available for uninstallation, pause new ones for a month, and test this some more. In a few weeks, I should also have the time to do a full system wipe and reset the machine if the problem remains by then.

And no, no Sonarworks on the system. Out of audio-related specialized software, I mainly work with DaVinci Resolve, and sometimes with Audacity and OBS Studio. The system also runs Genelec GLM at all times.

  • Registered: 2019-01-18
  • Posts: 12

Re: RME Fireface UCX II - Windows 11 issue

To report back, this didn't end up solving the problem, and I have discovered some new problematic behaviour. Infrequently, but multiple times, my system sound would start speed up (by a fraction that I speculate to be 48 kHz / 44.1 kHz) and start popping, like with severe bitrate/encoding problems. This would happen across multiple pretty different applications, e.g., MPC-BE and Google Chrome at the same time. 0/0 errors in the USB settings at the time, however when I power-cycled the UCX II (via the front button), it rebooted right into 1/17 error with dead audio that's been the topic of my previous messages here.

Another anecdotal observation is that it seems to be happening more frequently with some applications playing sound, e.g., Google Chrome, but I don't have any robust statistics here.

Not sure what else I can try, so I guess I'll start planning out formatting the system drive and reinstalling the OS from zero.

16 Reply by artstr_reg (edited by artstr_reg 2024-04-13 00:29:46)

  • Registered: 2019-01-18
  • Posts: 12

Re: RME Fireface UCX II - Windows 11 issue

Final update - reinstalling Windows did solve the issue. I did fail to rigorously establish the root cause of the issue, but my operating theory of it is that some low-level OS component related to USB drivers did become corrupted (without anything appearing on the system scan tools), causing errors in the RME driver's operation in a way that did persist through updating or reinstalling various hardware drivers. The same hardware is now back to working flawlessly with 64-sample buffer size, under the latest OS updates and all.