OT: USB mixer driver funkiness (and not in a good way)

[Dave Labrecque]

Installed an Allen & Heath ZEDi-10 mixer in a podcast client's studio. Want to make use of it's 4-in/4-out capability, but once drivers were installed on Windows 10 PC, I see four outs (two stereo devices), but only two ins (one stereo device) in both the host application and in the Windows Sound Properties applet thingy.

Anyone know what might be going on? Or what I can do to find inputs 3 and 4?

I tried uninstalling/reinstalling the drivers (the latest ones downloaded from A&H), but got the same result.

[cgrafx]

Installed an Allen & Heath ZEDi-10 mixer in a podcast client's studio. Want to make use of it's 4-in/4-out capability, but once drivers were installed on Windows 10 PC, I see four outs (two stereo devices), but only two ins (one stereo device) in both the host application and in the Windows Sound Properties applet thingy.

Anyone know what might be going on? Or what I can do to find inputs 3 and 4?

I tried uninstalling/reinstalling the drivers (the latest ones downloaded from A&H), but got the same result.

That's a really nice little mixer. Seams like it should do exactly what your looking for. Don't have anything at all to contribute to why its not working, other than to say it should be.

Probably need to put in a call to Allen and Heath.

[Dave Labrecque]

That's a really nice little mixer. Seams like it should do exactly what your looking for. Don't have anything at all to contribute to why its not working, other than to say it should be.

Probably need to put in a call to Allen and Heath.

Looking over the A&H website, it appears that they want me to call the folks who sold it to me for support. I did leave a message with Sweetwater, who got back to me with a message (when I was otherwise engaged) saying that's how it works, and I should call my sales engineer to see what other interface would give me the additional I/O that I need. Oy.

One thing I failed to mention is that I'm trying to use the MME driver (in SAW Pro). I've since tried to open the driver's ASIO component in an ASIO-compatible host, and it all appears to be there (all four in and out), so I may have to move the client in the direction of another host. But they're podcasters, not audio peeps, so they're not crazy about learning new stuff.

We'll see if Sweetwater can help sort it out (once they understand what I'm trying to tell them). They say their support folks are there on Saturdays.

[Butch Bos]

I own a LOT of misc usb and firewire interfaces I do not think any of them will show more than 1 stereo pair input in anything except ASIO
I have seen 3 stereo outputs in MME but only 1 pair in

Butch

[Dave Labrecque]

I'm starting to hear this from others. So strange. This is from the mixer's "Audio Driver Setup" doc, :

WDM/DirectX Features

* Supports standard Windows interfaces: MME, DirectSound, WASAPI
* Stereo and multi-channel playback / recording
* Volume and mute control through Windows Mixer

It's like they never even bothered to check to see if the non-ASIO stuff worked as they'd intended.

I think I've found a solution using VB-Audio's Hi-Fi Cable and ASIO Bridge. So far, it seems to work for my client's needs (a software solution, despite the cool graphic).

[Dave Labrecque]

UPDATE, if anyone cares. I found this quite interesting, though. But, that's me.

Sweetwater (where we bought the mixer), ultimately decided that the ZEDi-10 mixer's MME/WDM drivers don't do multi-channel audio. This, despite what the literature says.

I got a good back-and-forth through a support ticket with Allen & Heath. The guy even downloaded the SAWStudio demo and tried it out. ASIO worked fine (which I already knew). But not WDM or MME. He said I need to talk to the developer. () SAWStudio only sees a single stereo device each for input and output. Windows shows a single device, too. I'd thought this was clear indication that the driver doesn't do multichannel audio for MME/WDM. Turns out...

I downloaded another DAW's demo. Looks like it's coded differently, apparently, such that it sees four channels in that single device listing. Both for in and out. Who knew?

I figured there would always be multiple stereo devices presented for multi-channel audio. That's how SAW has always worked. And that's how my Digiface driver presented, too -- 12 stereo devices. So, what's up with that? Was there no MME/WDM standard for this aspect of the DAW/driver setup?

Anyway, not that it has any relevance in this day of ASIO (except for guys like my client), but I learned something new.

I guess I won't ask Bob if he can add some code for enhanced MME and WDM driver support to SAWPro (sold my copy to my client). Probably not much call for that these days.

[cgrafx]

UPDATE, if anyone cares. I found this quite interesting, though. But, that's me.

Sweetwater (where we bought the mixer), ultimately decided that the ZEDi-10 mixer's MME/WDM drivers don't do multi-channel audio. This, despite what the literature says.

I got a good back-and-forth through a support ticket with Allen & Heath. The guy even downloaded the SAWStudio demo and tried it out. ASIO worked fine (which I already knew). But not WDM or MME. He said I need to talk to the developer. () SAWStudio only sees a single stereo device each for input and output. Windows shows a single device, too. I'd thought this was clear indication that the driver doesn't do multichannel audio for MME/WDM. Turns out...

I downloaded another DAW's demo. Looks like it's coded differently, apparently, such that it sees four channels in that single device listing. Both for in and out. Who knew?

I figured there would always be multiple stereo devices presented for multi-channel audio. That's how SAW has always worked. And that's how my Digiface driver presented, too -- 12 stereo devices. So, what's up with that? Was there no MME/WDM standard for this aspect of the DAW/driver setup?

Anyway, not that it has any relevance in this day of ASIO (except for guys like my client), but I learned something new.

I guess I won't ask Bob if he can add some code for enhanced MME and WDM driver support to SAWPro (sold my copy to my client). Probably not much call for that these days.

Thanks for the update. Its actually good to have follow-up on these sorts of things, just so future peeps can benefit from past experience and knowledge.

[Dave Labrecque]

Thanks for the update. Its actually good to have follow-up on these sorts of things, just so future peeps can benefit from past experience and knowledge.

Thanks, Philip. My pleasure.