The GS Wavetable Synth Problem

[BobbyJum]

Hello.

I'm using Ableton Live 7 on a Dell Dimension 3100 with a Built -in Sigma-Tel Audio Card and a Emu XMidi1x1 USB midi interface as my default Midi In/Out.

In the Ableton Preferences Menu, in the Midi section the XMidi appears as in and out but so does the dreaded MS GS Wavetable SW Synth (out only). All boxes are set to off but yet i still can't get audio playback. I have also tried muting the SW Synth in the volume control panel.

In the ASIO4ALL Control Panel it shows the Audio Out as unavailable no matter what i do and suggests this is due to the SW Synth.

Audio is fine with the DirectX Full Duplex Driver but this goes a bit funny with a lot of instruments so i wanted to use ASIO4ALL.

Anyone got a proper fix for this? So far the best suggestion has been a lot of restarts and random button presses!

Can I get rid of the SW Synth somehow?

Your help would be much apperciated!

[Michael Tippach]

It does not necessarily have to be the MS GS Wavetable Synth hogging your audio device.

An open browser window containing an obnoxious ad banner making stupid noises may be all it takes. Also, IM applications and soft phones have been reported to be very possessive when it comes to ownership of audio devices.

An, of course, you _did_ disable system sounds, didn't you?

[BobbyJum]

Hello.

Thanks for the speedy reply. I'll have a look into these other causes.

I have found a work-around for the moment which is a bit fiddly but appears to work.

Something seems to 'steal' the audio card on start up if the Sigma-Tel Driver is enabled.

So I can get ASIO4ALL to work by disabling the Audio Card (through Control Panel/Sounds and Audio Devices/Hardware/Sigma-Tel Audio CODEC/Properties/Device usage) then restarting the computer (which it automatically asks you to do).

Once it has restarted, I manually enable the device via the same route as above (I use the Troubleshoot button) and run Ableton Live.

This seems to allow ASIO4ALL to get access, as well as letting me use Media Player etc.

I'll keep tinkering to see if I can get a better solution.

Thanks again for the reply and the excellent software (it was well worth the time spent, it's awesome!).

If only I could now fix my dodgy wireless connection!

Cheers
BobbyJum