USB Audio Interfaces not working on new 2.5k PC

[lilicetra]

I just spend 2.5k on this new desktop PC, for music production and gaming - and another 250 on this Audio Interface; but none of these are working.

Initially I had the Behringer UM2, and my PC would work fine; but occasionally the sound would cut out. I would then be forced to unplug and plug back my USB Audio interface in order to resolve it; this works for a while until it finally freezes my PC - as in my Keyboard and Mouse cant do anything and everything else is going on as normal (Except sound being cut out).

I just bought a new Steinberg UR22C, and the issue now is that the sound keeps pausing and playing like a slow youtube video. This is regardless of whether or not I'm in a DAW or not - and it gets significantly worse when Alt Tabbing.

Notes:
Alt Tabbing makes this issue worse

I have previously gotten issues (With the old Interface crashing my PC) where restarting the PC will say "Memory or CPU has changed"

I can plug my headphones directly into my PC with no issues to sound whatsoever.
All of the drivers for EVERYTHING are updated.
The windows Audio troubleshooter is useless

I have already tried disabling all other sound drivers

My Gear:

Corsair 750W RM750x 2021 80+ Gold Fully Modular ATX Power Supply

1 Cooler Master MasterBox TD500 Mesh Mid Tower E-ATX Case 

G Skill 32GB (2X16G)F4-3200C16D-32GVK RipJaws V 3200MHz DDR4 RAM - Black
MSI Pro Z690-A WiFi DDR4 LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard 

Intel Core i5 12600K 10 Core LGA 1700 CPU Processor
Kingston 1TB KC2500 M.2 NVMe SSD 

Corsair iCUE H150i Elite Capellix 360mm ARGB AIO Liquid CPU Cooler - White
Gigabyte Radeon RX 6600 Eagle Graphics Card 

USB Audio Interface UR22C

[Psittac]

So this is completely out of my realm however I don't know if this belongs in the audio section, it sounds like an OS/software side of things.  From what I see on this forum there isn't a lot of audio production posts made and while I never click on the production links, I wouldn't know if anyone would know something specific to your situation.

 

What I can do is ask a couple questions related to general problem solving.

 

When your PC used to restart where did it say "Memory or CPU has changed" was that in the uefi/bios IE a boot up screen before windows has started to load? Sounds like it to me.

 

When your computer has issues with slow play do you happen to have a secondary set of headphones that can be connected to the onboard audio so that you can compare the two?

 

*edit: When you say "everything else is going on as normal (Except sound being cut out)." How do you know that? Is it when a video is playing or a game is running?  That doesn't sound like an audio issue.  **it sounds like a usb issue

 

Have you updated your uefi/bios?  This sounds like the motherboard is having a hard time with it's southbridge or what ever they call it these days.

 

Have you attempted to download any additional usb audio drivers beyond windows update? Windows update has become phenomenal lately but niche uses like this could require digging for drivers/software.  A quick anecdote, My $500 consumer grade dac/amp would NOT play nice with windows until I dove into some kind of driver that for the life of me I can't remember anything about (use safe browsing and downloading techniques)  However I have since nuked my OS a number of times and after a bit windows just took care of it on it's own.

 

Last random thought, have you tried a different usb cable?  Sounds odd and probably not the issue but faulty cables can cause unexplainable issues.  Though that shouldn't explain the "Memory or CPU has changed" issues.  Also a comment for posterity sake, anything due directly to memory or cpu should be isolated to anything "northbridge" or cpu and memory and not much else, maybe pci-e though I'm not that up to date since the northbridge went on die.

 

This almost sounds like a low level issue, like hardware or uefi/bios.

 

*edit again: sounds like a usb driver or even hardware problem.  How a usb problem gets to the uefi I'm unsure

[The Flying Sloth]

Yeah, this sounds an awful lot like a softwarte issue with your machine.

Make sure the sample rates / bit depth are set correctly accross the programs you're using (IE, make sure DAW settings match your interface and Windows, make sure your DAW is using your interface ASIO drivers too), try switching the USB connector to a different port, if that doesn't fix it it sounds to me like there's something broken with your windows install. I do music / audio production fairly regularly and don't have these issues at all with any interfaces I own (or have owned for that matter) though I am on an AMD platform so it may always be something to do with that.

Honestly, this just screams sample rate mismatch to me, your CPU isn't overly weak so it shouldn't be a factor, if it's not sample rate issues it's probably your windows install.

[Psittac]

Did you find a solution?

[ShearMe]

First thing to try is definitely a windows reinstall. Use LatencyMon to see if a specific program is causing trouble: https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon