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

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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
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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
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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
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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)

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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)

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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
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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)

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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
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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.

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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)

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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.

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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)

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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.

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Re: RME Fireface UCX II - Windows 11 issue

artstr_reg wrote:

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.

Hey there,

Not sure if you're still around, but I'm curious about how the UCX II is working for you these days. I have the same X670E Taichi motherboard with a 7950X CPU and got a bit concerned after reading your posts, as I'm considering getting a UCX II for this particular rig.

I'm currently using a MOTU UltraLite AVB, which I love for its routing capabilities, but it's very picky with newer motherboards and USB 3.2 Gen1/2 ports (which the Taichi has a bunch of), and the drivers on Windows are quite finicky. I often run into a well known issue where I don't have audio after a cold boot, and I've finally had enough.

All my other interfaces (Lynx Aurora, Clarett+ 8Pre, and Scarlett 8i6 3rd Gen) work flawlessly with this motherboard, but I need a compact and reliable unit, which is why I'm considering the RME. I decided to search for any Windows issues with the UCX II just in case and was surprised to see a build so similar to mine. I'm currently on Windows 11 Pro 22H2 22621.3880.

Are you using the top yellow "Lightning" USB ports? I appreciate any feedback you can provide. Cheers!

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Re: RME Fireface UCX II - Windows 11 issue

I'm kinda glad to see this topic tbh. I thought it was my Windows 11 installation getting crappy and opted to reinstall everything, which I did not do yet.

The UC before getting the UCX II never gave an issue with my configuration. I just replaced the RME interface in-place.
I know AMD hasn't been great with USB port stability, but the UC did fine as did other USB devices.

My specs:
Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Hero (X570 chipset)
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X
64GB memory
AMD Radeon 7800XT

Powersave settings also disabled on the USB hub devices.

I might try a powered external USB3 hub in the meantime, which I think is using an Intel chipset to omit the AMD motherboard.

19 Reply by tonpalt (edited by tonpalt 2024-07-17 18:46:07)

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Re: RME Fireface UCX II - Windows 11 issue

Hello


Here another "victim" of AMD X399 surviving Windows 11 and sharing experiences, also learning from you :)

I will begin by quoting Chapter 40.3 USB Audio of the UCXII User Manual (page 115):

Best USB 2 performance is achieved by connecting the UCX II to its own bus, which should be
no big problem as most USB 2.0 interfaces are a double bus design. A check in the Device Man-
ager can be done as follows:

> Connect the UCX II to a USB 2 port
> Start the Device Manager, View set to Devices by Connection
> Select ACPI x86-based PC, Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System, expand PCI Bus

This branch normally includes two entries of a USB2 Enhanced Host Controller. A USB Root Hub
can be seen, which then connects all USB devices, including the UCX II. By reconnecting to a
different port this view shows at which of the two controllers the UCX II is connected. With multiple
devices it can be checked if they are connected to the same controller.

Unfortunately this wasn't helpful to me, in my case (and I guess for many others too) Windows Device Manager is a disaster to get accurate information about the USB devices connected to each port/controller, at least in an accessible and easy way. Also X399 was never a final destination, but rather a step in their marketing experiment where AMD (also Intel) tries to convince us that “you need a new CPU”, almost offensive seeing the botches they have left along the way.

Criticisms aside, the tool that has been useful for me is Microsoft USBView (also Win11 supported), link bellow

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windo … er/usbview

And bellow an edited screenshot using USBView where you can see different USB devices, from USB 2.0  up to USB 3.1 Gen2, connected to my motherboard ports and headers which I will now explain as a non-expert user in the field:

- Green rectangles=USB Host (Motherboard) Controllers
- Red rectangles/arrows/text: Connected devices that may interfering correct UCXII data transfer due to user's ignorance or motherboard maker's clumsiness. Please see the 1st USB Host Controller in the tree ...
- Blue rectangle: RME Fireface UCX II.

https://onedrive.live.com/embed?resid=3411252949887438%21589&authkey=%21AN8v9cXxrlvSeko&width=1183&height=1094

As you can see in the drop down tree on the right the first USB Host Controller groups from 2.0 to 3.1 Gen2 including the integrated Bluetooth module on the motherboard, this is what I mean by saying "maker's clumsiness".

So my conclusion based on my experience is that to avoid data checking errors via RME USB Settings I must connect my UCXII to an exclusive USB Host Controller for it, in this case a USB 3.0 motherboard rear port (or what is the same USB 3.1 Gen1). Since then 0/0 errors, a different matter is how Windows 11 and DAWs do their job ...

Another tool that I find useful is Fix problems using Windows Update, I have to reinstall the RME and Focusrite drivers after using it but at least I keep files, applications and settings. To do this follow the path:

Windows Settings→Windows Update→Advanced Options→Recovery→Fix problems using Windows Update→Reinstall now

... but I also know that in a short time I will have to perform a clean installation of Windows 11, so tedious but useful.


Thank you OP and RME Community

FF UCX II 106/34/104 v1.251 - PC X399 + Windows 11 Pro 23H2 - Reaper 7.20

20 Reply by kd (edited by kd 2024-07-18 14:33:57)

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Re: RME Fireface UCX II - Windows 11 issue

MC wrote:

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?

I really have to disagree.
Never had any problems with AMD ....

However, I use Siv64X to check my hardware. No other program provides so much information on the subject ...
Since I work with W11 and W7 on the same PC, my current impression is that UEFI causes many problems here, because if problems then mostly under both OS.
MAC there are no such problems, but there are others.


https://kulturdieb.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/SIV64x-1.jpg

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Re: RME Fireface UCX II - Windows 11 issue

Reese wrote:

I might try a powered external USB3 hub in the meantime, which I think is using an Intel chipset to omit the AMD motherboard.

Correction. It is a Realtek chipset, but computer still freezes at random; about once or twice in a day. Contemplating on reinstalling the OS now..

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Re: RME Fireface UCX II - Windows 11 issue

=Reese

Contemplating on reinstalling the OS now..


This week I finished a long maintenance process on my PC as a last resort before a clean install of Win11. What I have done ...

BIOS:
- Disable ReBAR (I'm not gamer) and HD Audio (miniJack's and SPDIF optical).

OS:
- Uninstall all monitoring/benchmark/OC tools (CPU-Z, GPU-Z, AMD Ryzen Master) except HWINFO .
- Uninstall Realtek Audio driver provided by motherboard manufacturer (since disabling HD Audio in BIOS not necessary, also Win11 has greatly improved driver provision).
- Uninstall Nvidia PhysX and Nvidia HD Audio driver
- Uninstall all Microsoft bloatware as possible except what I consider necessary.
- Fix problems using Windows Update.
- Clean up storage via Windows Settings.

Now I realise that I have used my PC ‘for everything’ and installed unnecessary software and drivers for entertainment or absurd obsession (I didn't take into account that if it works ... don't touch anything except for security reasons). There are other PCs that can do it (AMD or Intel) and maintain stability as an Audio workstation but it's not my case, not on my PC.

I've also noticed that errors appear in Fireface USB Settings (sporadic and without drop-out, no more than 0/5) depending on the use of the Win11 graphical environment (Win+tab or Alt+tab) or just launching Cubase Elements 13.0.41 and then launching VirtualBox (Fedora 40 VM). IMHO Ableton Live Lite 12 is not as sensitive or more stable than Cubase regarding CPU Peak but based on my experience I have the feeling that Win11, stability-wise, is still in a BETA state, at least on my PC.


Kind regards

FF UCX II 106/34/104 v1.251 - PC X399 + Windows 11 Pro 23H2 - Reaper 7.20

23 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2024-07-20 19:26:51)

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Re: RME Fireface UCX II - Windows 11 issue

CPU-Z, GPU-U are not critical in any way.
Nvidia PhysX and Nvidia HD Audio driver do no harm.

Better disable the performance sucking Kern virtualization.
Best is a Rufus based installation without all the needs for TPM, SecureBoot, Online Account (disconnect PC from network during installation).

Check with LatencyMon how agile your PC is, the lower the DPC latencies on an IDLE system without big peaks / spikes the better.

Do the usual optimizations .. no C-States etc .. there are many threads in this forum about that.
Also look for disabling power saving on nVidia card if needed, see powermizer tool, also mentioned in perf optimization related threads here on this forum.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13
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Re: RME Fireface UCX II - Windows 11 issue

Well, I continued to investigate the cause of the diagnostic errors in Fireface USB Settings which seemed to be coming from the Windows graphics environment (just launching or closing Cubase would cause errors) so I completely uninstalled Nvidia drivers via DDU and installed the latest Studio driver 560.70 via NVCleanstall, installing ONLY the driver (required).

In my case it has been determinant together with finding the most stable USB port on my PC. CPU Peaks in Cubase 13 have been greatly reduced and when they occur occasionally no new errors appear in FF USB Settings, all this at 96 samples Buffer Size and 96Khz Sample Rate with an input/output latency of ~3ms.

In case anyone is interested:

DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) by Wagnardsoft https://www.wagnardsoft.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4992

NVCleanstall by TechPowerUp https://www.techpowerup.com/nvcleanstall/


Happy silent or sound summer smile

FF UCX II 106/34/104 v1.251 - PC X399 + Windows 11 Pro 23H2 - Reaper 7.20

25 Reply by Reese (edited by Reese 2024-08-03 19:58:55)

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Re: RME Fireface UCX II - Windows 11 issue

Bit better here as well.

AMD Adrenalin updated to 24.7.1 and RME driver to 1.251 in the past week.

Edit 03-08-2024: Experienced no issues anymore. In the meantime I've updated Windows11 to 24H2 as well.

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Re: RME Fireface UCX II - Windows 11 issue

https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=38978