# Asio Performance Problems with UR44



## PhilipeZ (Nov 17, 2015)

Hey Guys,

today, I bought the Steinberg UR44 to replace my old audio interface (Lexicon OMEGA) which had some problems.

To check out it's asio performance, I loaded a bigger project in cubase that my old interface could only play back with the greatest buffer size (2048 samples) without dropouts and noises. For any reason, my old interface did not longer work with it's firmware drivers, so I used Asio4All. I always assumed that drivers specifically made for an interface would be better, so I expected that it would be no problem to play back this project. Unfortunately, it's absolutely impossible just to playback a second (at greatest buffer size) because when it starts, the UR44 Driver is immediately so much overwhelmed that it does not play anything but a few milliseconds and then drops out completely.

I already updated the drivers. I also tried to use the UR44 with Asio4All and I think, it's a little bit better but still much worse than my old interface. With my old interface, it's still working without problems, so it must depend on the interface itself of the way it works with my computer.

My System:
Win 7 64-Bit
Cubase Studio 5
4x3,4Ghz
8GBRam


Anybody's got an idea what the problem could be here?
I'm wondering if there are really so big differences in performance between different interfaces.
Is there a way to know about the asio performance of an interface before trying out?

Thank you!


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## Pietro (Nov 17, 2015)

There are differences. I had bad experience with Steinberg interface, namely UR28M. I returned it a couple of days after I got it. The reason was, it performed like crap, compared to my previous E-MU 0404USB, which was a 150EUR interface. And this was on a fresh Windows install.

I then decided to go with RME UCX. Tripple the price of the UR28M, but a sure purchase. It performs much better then that Steinberg and slightly (but not that much) better than E-MU. But otherwise is rock solid.

What I suggest is to check if there is some firmware update for the interface available. These usually solve this kind of problems. If not, I would probably return it and keep searching for something solid.

- Piotr


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## apessino (Nov 17, 2015)

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the UR44 (or any of the other UR interfaces). They are very high quality, well built and offer fantastic performance for the price. The first couple of iterations of the drivers had a few latency issues, but that was years ago and the problems have been gone ever since. I have a UR824 which has been rock solid from day one (never had a single issue, a pop or a click), runs all day with a buffer size of 128 and has super low latency. The preamps are also fantastic and the fact that the optical ADATs can be switched to optical SPDIF was a great bonus. It is also perfectly integrated with Cubase and the dsp mix software is easy to use and very flexible.

The kinds of issues you are experiencing are nowhere near normal - something seriously wrong is going on... make sure you are running the latest drivers from the Steinberg site, make sure you see the card properly in the dsp mix app, make sure you select the Yamaha ASIO driver for it in Cubase. Perhaps it has something to do with how old your version of Cubase is? Was Cubase Studio 5 even 64 bit? Next I would see if a more recent version works well (you could download a demo of Pro 8 and check it out - of course you'll end up buying it...  ), or get a different DAW and see how well the interface works there. A demo of Studio One 3 (which is sooooo good) is available, or you can get Reaper which is fully featured and can be tested for free.

Before you return the fine interface you have make sure you understand where the problem is - my money would be on your ancient version of the DAW...  Good luck!


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## PhilipeZ (Nov 18, 2015)

Thank you for your replies. The firmware is up to date. I tried to use it with the cubase 8 demo, it's the same problem. I used the Waves GTR-Plugin to test the performance. The Lexicon Omega can handle 16 instances without problems, maybe more, I did not try it out, while the UR44 cannot handle 12 of them.

Well, I cannot tell if the Lexicon Omega has especially good performance or the UR44 especially bad, but I really expected that an interface that costs twice as much would at least offer the same performance... So I think I'll return it during the next days and look for something different.


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