Noise on SAR added in/out devices but not on channels from existing ASIO driver

[ramonsmits]

SAR: 0.13.1 Windows: 20H2 DAW: Reaper + Cantabile

I have configured SAR as follows:

This means I have 2 incoming mono and 2 outgoings stereo (4 mono) channels from my Focusrite audio interface and 2 stereo channels in and 2 stereo channels out from SAR.

In both Reaper and Cantabile there is no issue mapping the Focusrite inputs to the outputs but both on the SAR inputs and outputs there is significant noise. When I use excessive volumes I do hear something.

What works

• Mapping audio interface inputs to outputs
• Playing audio from applications directly to any of my connected gear (bypassing SAR)

What doesn't work:

• incoming SAR ports (audio playing from applications)
• outgoing SAR ports (audio recorded by applications like Skype and Zoom)

I've tried:

1. Using different buffer sizes
2. ASIO 16/24 bit
3. Samplerate 48.000/41.400

[ramonsmits]

I've tested with ASIO4ALL and using that with my Focusrite works. I don't have any noise with that combination.

[amurzeau]

Can you set the environment variable SAR_ASIO_LOG=1 while starting your DAW and then try to use your Focusrite directly (which will cause noise) and then using ASIO4ALL. Then post here the logs available in %APPDATA%\SynchronousAudioRouter\logs ?

[ramonsmits]

@amurzeau Here some logs: logs.zip

This was with Cantabile x86. First was using ASIO4AL, second using Focusrite.

[amurzeau]

did you tried >10ms and <10 ms buffer size ?

[ramonsmits]

did you tried >10ms and <10 ms buffer size ?

@amurzeau I tried that yes in the past. Larger than 10ms would give an ASIO initialization error.

Second, 10ms would be over 480 samples which would not make this suitable for my live usage.

The reason I wanted to use SAR + the Focusrite driver is that it allows setting the sample size to 48 where ASIO4ALL its smallest setting is 64.

[ramonsmits]

Sorry, didn't test it with the virtual devices SAR added yesterday. Still is an issue, no matter the latency. Latency above 10ms is rejected as expected due to the windows audio limitation.

[ramonsmits]

In the noise you hear the incoming or outgoing audio on the virtual playback/records SAR devices. It's almost as there is a stream conversion issue with the Focusrite ASIO driver that doesn't happen with ASIO4ALL.

Just looked at the logs myself. I didn't expect them to be text :-) but there is no info mentioned on which sample format is used. Would be interesting to compare is the ASIO4ALL driver uses a different format than Focusrite ASIO.