Audio problems after upgrading graphics card

Installation & Configuration Windows
#1

I’m currently running Ardour 8.12 on Windows 11, but have run the software since 2021 without any real issues until now.

Today I upgraded the graphics card on my rig, and Windows in its infinite wisdom tends to view monitors as ideal sound output devices, and suggest them as your new audio device whenever they’re re-presented to it through new hardware, like a new graphics card. I have better output than those, though, so I went and disabled them as output devices from Control Panel…

I get sound from every other program on the computer, but opening an Ardour project gives me a message about “Engine I/O device has changed since you last opened this session”

That’s fine by itself, I can then choose the proper output device afterwards.

However, when the project loads there’s no sound. I read through some other posts about similar issues, and have tried several things, like reinstalling Ardour (trying with and without the WASAPI driver) and checking the Master channel’s output device, and for some reason the “Hardware” tab is not hooked up to any playback. However enabling them, as suggested in different threads, does not enable playback.

If I start a new project, choosing the exact same audio output device as above, THAT works, but no matter what I do I can’t seem to get audio back in existing projects, and I certainly do not want to remix every track I’ve got from scratch…

When I play I notice that the audio level bars are moving on all individual tracks and busses, but the Master is completely dead:

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That also affects exports, which shouldn’t really go through the output device (?), which also end up completely mute.

I’ve even tried some manual editing of the project XML-files even, trying to copy the output settings from a working new project to an old ones, but when I open that I still get no audio, despite no error messages…

I’m in desperate need of some suggestions on how to fix this issue! Is there for instance any way of deleting a master bus and adding a new one, and get things working that way?

Hope someone can help with this!

#2

Then the first thing to check would be the audio connection manager and verify that all tracks have outputs connected to the master bus as expected.

#3

Yeah, I should have mentioned that; that’s been checked. All tracks are connected either directly or via other busses along the way, and there’s also no “feedback” light blinking.

It seems to apply to ALL previous projects, and they were of course working last time I saved them…

#4

In that case perhaps one of the plugins is not passing audio for some reason. Try moving the point at which the master bus meter monitors the signal. Start out by changing to a peak meter on the input, that should let you know if the tracks are really routed to the bus correctly.

#5

If I switch the Master to “input” mode, there’s definitely signal there:
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Same applies for pre fader, but post fader it’s gone. Disabling the plugins in the master bus does not change anything. No error messages about faulty or missing plugins.

Besides, and like I said before, it was working before, but not now, and it applies to ALL previously working projects I’ve opened, so the problem is not related to a specific project.

#6

Great, you know the problem occurs somewhere between the input and the output.
Are the circled connections intended to be disconnected? I am not familiar with those plugins, are the connections in place correct, and the circled connections just unused sidechain inputs?
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I found the Fresh Air plugin at Slate Digital, but I did not see any user guide, and the interface shown did not show any sidechain input that I could see, so it is not clear what that circled point would be.
Same with the J37 Tape emulation, I found the page at Waves, but nothing in the info looked like it involved a third connection, so no clear what that connection point represents.

Since you know that the signal is OK upstream of the fader, start by putting all of the master bus plugins in bypass and see if there is still a problem or not. If not, then enable plugins one by one until you find the plugin which is a problem.

If there is still a problem even with all the plugins in bypass, that is a little trickier because a fader is the simplest possible control, and present on every channel and bus. At that point you may have to actually remove the plugins from the bus configuration to strip it back down to a default empty configuration to make sure what is going on. Hopefully the first step of bypassing all the plugins, then enabling one by one will indicate where the problem occurs.

#7

I tried to update the previous post with info that bypassing/disabling the plugins does not work. With all of them bypassed it’s still quiet as the grave…

Fresh Air, Black Box, Abbey Road and CHOWTape are all basically saturation plugins of various sorts, Fresh Air focused primarily on high frequencies. The latter three plugins in the chain are various mastering/limiting plugins. I’ve used them all several times before, and they all worked fine yesterday.

I kind of doubt the issue is with a plugin or anything on the master bus, since the issue is present in all old projects I’ve tried so far.

#8

Thanks for making me look at the plugins closer, Chris!

So it seems the “Black Box Analog” thing was what was causing the issue! When I deleted it, sound came back. Bypassing it wasn’t enough.

Apparently the reasons was that the plugin, and quite possibly other plugins from Plugin Alliance as well, had lost their activation information upon restart of the computer, thus making all tracks with their plugins present silent. When opening the plugin after identifying it as the culprit I got a message about needing to activate. Doing that was just a formality, since I own a valid license, and then sound came back.

It just didn’t come to my mind to check that since I got the error messages about Ardour not finding the audio device it used before, so it was natural for me to think of that error message and the lack of sound even after choosing a new configuration as cause and effect, and not two separate issues as it actually turned out to be.

Thanks for guiding me on the way! Now I can sleep easer tonight!

#9

Good, glad you found the problem.

You were using the Ardour bypass control, not a control within the plugin? I would have to let Paul or Robin comment on what might be going on there, I thought that the Ardour bypass control would leave the processing active, but route the audio around the processor block. Maybe I am mistaken about how the bypass is implemented, but surprising that the plugin still blocked audio when bypassed (assuming you used the Ardour control, because who knows how an internal plugin control might be implemented on a closed source plugin).

#10

No it doesn’t IIRC, it asks the plugin to bypass itself as that is the only way it can get a click free audio experience with the bypass. So yep could still definitely have the behavior described here.

   Seablade
#11

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