Playback Engine issue.
 

I have a Creative SoundBlaster X-AE5 PCIE soundcard. For playback engine options in PT First I have:

Windows Audio Device (currently selected)
Creative SB/SBX AE DSD ASIO Device
Creative SB/SBX AE DSD series Device

Input: WhatUHear (SoundBlaster X- AE5) (currently selected)

Output: 1. Asus High Definition Audio Device (monitor speakers) (this is the default selection by Pro Tools)
2. SPDIF OUT (SoundBlaster X- AE5)
3. Speakers (SoundBlaster X- AE5)

Speakers (SoundBlaster X- AE5) should be my headphone output from the SoundBlaster X- AE5 and when I select it Avid says it's needs to restart but it doesn't. Instead it sits there on a blank gray screen. When I go to the playback settings again (from the blank gray screen with toolbar) the output device has again defaulted to Asus High Definition Audio Device.

I'm not sure what the issue is. What should be the correct way to configure the SoundBlaster X- AE5? :confused:

Edit: When I select SB/SBX AE DSD series Device as the playback engine I get Output options for Front/Rear L/R analog outputs from the soundcard but I want headphone output not analog outputs.

Re: Playback Engine issue.
 

Sharing a single audio device between Windows and Pro Tools typically does not work well since Windows is trying to use certain settings for your sound device and Pro Tools is trying to take control of the same device. With the limited IO options in First, this makes it even worse.

You can try the selecting ‘Creative SB/SBX AE DSD ASIO Device’ in the playback engine and see if that works.

Your best results would be with an external USB audio interface.

Re: Playback Engine issue.
 

When I select Creative SB/SBX AE DSD ASIO Device I get another box pop saying "Your audio device is configured with an unsupported audio buffer size. Please select on of the following buffer sizes in the device control panel, if available:32, 64, 128 etc"

I can't find any buffer settings in the SoundBlaster control panel. Do I need to install ASIO or something like that?

Re: Playback Engine issue.
 

Pro Tools First works best with an ASIO compatible audio interface

Example 1

Example 2

and many many more.

If you don't have one, you can try ASIO4ALL

But a dedicated interface is the best way to go.

Re: Playback Engine issue.
 

I will see if I can get ASIO4ALL to work for the purpose of getting started and then look into an audio interface. Thanks.

Re: Playback Engine issue.
 

I've now installed the Pro Tools standard with trial. I've selected ASIO4ALL as the playback engine. I've loaded the blues preset project but can't hear anything anything in playback of the blues loop. Any idea on this?

Re: Playback Engine issue.
 

First, I would check your IO settings in Pro Tools.
In the IO settings dialog, select the Output tab and ensure that you have outputs mapped in Pro Tools. If not or if things don't look right, press the Default button and see if that fixes your IO routing. If things are still not pointing to the outputs you want, then most likely they are not set up right in ASIO4ALL and you will first have to go back and correct that.

Once everything looks okay in the IO setup, open the project and ensure that your tracks are set to the outputs on your system. Typically when you open a session that was saved with different hardware, it will default to whatever the last device was. So you may need to set all of your outputs to whatever your outputs are on your system.

Re: Playback Engine issue.
 

I figured out the problem was that I didn't have the Xpand!2 plugin and sound library installed. Now that's installed everything looks go to go. :cool:

Re: Playback Engine issue.
 

Great! Glad it is working for you now.