Scarlett 18i20 Woes, I Think

[Steve@ZooWest]

PT 12.4
Windows 10
Scarlett 18i20

PT has been unhappy for some time - audio suddenly becomes very distorted and seems to be playing at half speed. Other times it won't play and blue is flashing on the stop or play button.

Today it stopped working altogether. In a session with nothing but Ivory piano on an aux and a midi track, it won't play or record. It still shows up in the Hardware Setup, and the settings seem to be correct, but with nothing playing and nothing in the session, the mix meters in the upper right of the interface are in the red constantly.

Spent a lot of time with Focusrite techs on chat. They were prompt and helpful, but still no solution.

In programs and features it lists:

Scarlett Mix Control 1.8
Focusrite Scarlett Family Audio Driver 3.2b1
Focusrite USB 2.0 Audio Driver 2.5.1

In Device Manager:

1) In USB controllers I don't see anything that says Scarlett or Focusrite.

2) Sound, Video, and Game Controllers it shows up, and

3) In Software Devices there are 2 icons that each say
4 - Scarlett 18i20 USB (1)

I'm just not familiar enough with this to know exactly what to get rid of and/or if I need to delete everything and start over. The chat hours indicate I'm on my own until Monday. This not good - I have a mountain of work over the next few days.

My first inclination is to get rid of the "Focusrite Scarlett Family Audio Driver 3.2b1" since it's Beta and then restart but I'm hoping for some wise counsel before I leap....

[JCBigler]

Are you using a First Gen Scarlett 18i20 or a Second Gen?

I use a first gen Scarlett 18i20 with Windows 10 Pro, see my sig.

I had some intermittent weirdness with my Scarlett when I was on Windows 7. Could never really narrow it down and then it seems to have gone away when I changed laptops and moved to Windows 10.

I think it has something to do with the USB sub system that the individual laptops use. Not sure how to verify that or what can be done if it is the culprit other than getting a different computer. I would start by uninstalling everything related to the Scarlett, and even uninstalling the USB drivers for your computer and downloading current ones from the manufacturer. Then reinstall the Scarlett drivers. Start with the most recent stable drivers, that's what I am using and they seem to be working well.

Also make sure that Windows is not set to use the Scarlett interface for Windows sound. You can even disable it in the Sound Set up of the Windows Control Panel and Protools will work fine. That way Windows doesn't even see it as a possible audio interface.

The only other issue I have had was with another audio program on my system that seems to interfere with Protools. Once I uninstalled that things have been rock solid again.

Barring that, it could be a hardware problem with the Scarlett. Have you tried using it on another system to see if the errors follow it? If so, then Focusrite should replace it for you.

[Steve@ZooWest]

I am indeed on a first generation Scarlett; my Windows 10 system is not Pro.

Audio and MIDI seem to be working fine now. Focusrite spent a lot of time with me yesterday working on the issues via TeamViewer. I don't know exactly what changed, other than that I'm now on the beta version of Mix Control. I'm sure all techs are not created equal, but mine was really quite good IMHO.

One interesting tidbit from yesterday - one of the techs said you can have Windows audio using the Scarlett until you start using Pro Tools; that in their experience, it doesn't geek anything by going back and forth; and even if you forget and don't disable it before going to PT you should just be able to restart PT, disable it in Windows, and it should run fine. I guess I had assumed there might be collateral damage if that happened. Of course it still doesn't seem like a good plan to do windows audio that way, but an interesting FYI.

[Steve@ZooWest]

Here's the latest - after theoretically fixing my issues with the Scarlett 18i20 I still am having serious problems.

Randomly, a session will stop working. Play or Record does nothing. Lights up the green play button but will not budge. Creating a new session may or may not help; usually they do't play. Sometimes a new session seems to work.

Went through the optimizations Focusrite suggested, which are very similar to what Avid has.

I'm clocking with a Mytek Stereo96 ADC. Changed the Scarlett to Internal but that didn't help. It only seems to affect the sessions I'm currently working on in a particular folder, which is nested fairly deep - surely that wouldn't be an issue.

I've tried opening many other sessions from the same drive, and they have all opened and played fine, although I didn't spend any time - just verified that they would play.

More information: I removed everything from an offending session so there were no tracks and nothing in the audio/midi files bin. Still no go. It always shows the very beginning measure of the session with the play light stuck green.

[The Weed]

Try moving the session closer to the drive letter, ie, so it's not so "deep". While I haven't had any issues with PT, I have had other instances where the length of the address to a file was an issue. Just something to try to eliminate that being a cause.

[Steve@ZooWest]

I was just wondering about that yesterday. The session folder is nested pretty deep. Would be a beautiful thing if that was the fix!

[Shroombaker]

It's been seven months. Any resolution to your problems?