Why Are Disabled ASIO Audio Devices Displayed in Playback Engine?

[John9281]

*** Software ***
Pro Tools, Version 2021.12.0 Trial
Windows 10 Pro, Version 21H1, OS build 19043.1415
***************

In the Windows Sound dialog, I disabled all the Playback and Recording audio devices.
Why? Because Voicemeeter does something unexpected.

Using Programs and Features, I uninstalled every app which had AVID in the name.
Rebooted
I forgot to look in the Roaming to see if the uninstall removed the Pro Tool stuff.
I installed a clean download of
"Pro_Tools_2021.12.0_Win.zip"
The following is what I saw upon opeing the fresh installation.

*** Playback Engine ***

As you can see in the Playback Engine attachment,
the Voicemeeter Virtual ASIO devices display.
Why since they are disabled?

Playback Engine
Windows Audio Device
Voicemeeter Insert Virtual ASIO
Voicemeeter AUX Virtual ASIO
Voicemeeter Virtual ASIO

In the Playback Engine, why does it include "Windows Audio Device" as a menu item?
If I select it, it displays "AAE error -6117 was encountered".
Does this mean that Pro Tools requires that ALL input and output audio drivers it uses must have an ASIO driver or ASIO wrapper?
If that is true, then why does it say "Windows Audio Device"?

*** Hardware Settings ***
As you can see in the Hardware Settings attachment,
Voicemeeter Insert Virtual ASIO displays.
Why? - I am not sure how to disable it.

Hardware Settings
Voicemeeter Insert Virtual ASIO

Thank you in advance for your help.

[Darryl Ramm]

You uninstalled Voicemeeter? Voicemeeter Banana? That's not from Avid, so Avid uninstallers won't help. If so the uninstaller likely is faulty and left the ASIO driver installed or left the registry in a mess so that Pro Tools thinks there are ASIO driver there. Sometimes uninstallers will ask if you want to leave drivers there or not. Did this one? If there was no uninstaller installed with Voicemeeter then see if there is one distributed with the installer or available on the vendors' web site.

Device Manager should tell you about all drivers, but I'm not sure where these virtual ASIO devices show up. If you are comfortable doing a bit of surgery you can go splunking for the actual driver .sys file.

If drivers are uninstalled then you can use regedit to delete the ASIO entries. https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/e...device-entries. Even if they are not installed that should will probably stop Pro Tools giving them as playback engine choices (still better to really remove old drivers).

Edit: Duh: My misreading, Windows 10 not Pro Tools 10 so your Pro Tools version supports ASIO devices and Windows WASAPI... which uh run the other way from that. You want an ASIO device with really good drivers and support from the driver vendor (to keep drivers up to date etc.). Who knows what Pro Tools is doing in showing Windows Devices, maybe that seeing WASAPI. Lots of stuff around detection of interfaces and seeing if they are suitable is terribly implemented. e.g. throwing ASSERTS for problems that should cause a simple user error message.

With these and the other UA-25EX problem you reported it might be a good idea to wipe the system and install a clean copy of Windows 10. Or much better install a test copy of Windows 10 on a spare drive or partition, and just see if that gets all these issues to go away. Ideally a clean copy of Windows downloaded from Microsoft with no OEM crapware in it... even if that means buying another Windows license if what you have now is an OEM license.

[ChuckS]

Windows audio and ASIO drivers are separate sets of drivers. Disabling devices in the Windows Sound control panel has no effect on ASIO driven devices.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by ChuckS

Windows audio and ASIO drivers are separate sets of drivers. Disabling devices in the Windows Sound control panel has no effect on ASIO driven devices.

To be clear the only reason to look at Windows Sound is you don't want to be accessing a Windows sound device while also trying to use it as an ASIO device.

[The Weed]

To Darryl's point, use the onboard soundcard for Windows sounds/audio and your interface only for Pro Tools.

What is your interface? And what are you trying to accomplish with Voicemeeter of whatever flavor you're using?