No Sound on Windows 10

Funny enough, quite to the contrary. In some cases we even recommend explicitly deleting that folder. But in this particular case I don’t see what it would do any good for the Connexant driver. Deleting the folder won’t damage anything, but also will not rectify anything.

What is strange though, Philip mentioned that when he plays on the HALion on-screen keyboard sometimes correct audio comes out. If that is the case, then it is really a sound driver issue, because the audio engine indeed does deliver processed audio to the sound device but the driver can’t get it properly out.
So my suggestion would be to try with the ASIO4all driver. Similarly like Steinberg’s Generic Lower Latency Driver, it’s a general purpose ASIO driver that shall work with virtually any audio device. Best thing, it’s for free and can be downloaded here http://www.asio4all.com/

OP started with ASIO4ALL. That’s why Is suggested the Low latency Generic. From what reading I could find, the issue is probably around the conexant driver and Win10, but I recommend killing the VSTAudioEngine folder as precaution to remove one more variable from the equation. I agree that since Halion SE is showing intermittent effects, the most likely source of the issue is something going on between ASIO and the conexant driver. The OP does report, however, that audio is OK in other Windows apps which suggests that the WDM audio is working. This leads me to think that something about what ASIO4ALL is asking the conexant driver to do (bit rate, bit depth for example) is the source of the difficulty. ASIO4ALL has additional settings, but I am not expert with them. My other thought was to try to go back to Win 7 driver for conexant, which seems to have a better historical pedigree and is likely to work OK with Win10.

Could the ASIO4ALL options “Always resample 44.1 kHz <-> 48 kHz” or “Force WDM Driver to 16-Bit” be helpful in this situation?

This is a thing to try that I found on the Microsoft Insider forum:

I was having the same problem (which was how I found your posting). You’ve probably found the solution by now, but for anyone who has recently updated to Windows 10 and, like me, has just run into this, it appears to be a problem with the IDT driver. The most recent driver on the company’s website is older than the one that ships with Windows 10, so it’s no help, but I did find this solution in another forum and it worked for me:

  1. Select IDT High Definition Audio CODEC on Device Manager.
  2. Select Driver tab.
  3. Click Update Driver… button.
  4. Select → Browse my computer for driver software.
  5. Select → Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer.
  6. Select High Definition Audio Device (Not IDT High Def… this is important) and click Next.
    A warning message pops up; click Yes.
  7. ! Windows has successfully updated your driver software.
    After a reboot I had my sound back. The key is step 6.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/insider_wintp-insider_devices/no-sound-on-windows-10-64bit/253b0f88-f17c-4018-89df-ee48e3b95380?page=101

Sorry, I’ve lost the overview, indeed, Philip mentioned that he had ASIO4All.
Interesting that that one also doesn’t work, because many people report ASIO4All to be better than Steinberg’s Generic Low Latency Driver. We are fine with that, since we don’t claim to provide the best generic driver. Quite to the contrary, we see it only as a crutch. It’s just so that we can give people something in the hand to get audio out of their built-in sound chips. For any serious audio user we recommend to use a decent external audio interface with a dedicated ASIO driver. It doesn’t need to be a multi hundred dollar interface, really good gear starts already just below the 100$ mark.
A well written ASIO driver is the key for good audio performance, as it not only shuffles the audio out via the device, but it also drives the audio application by regularly making callbacks to fetch the audio. If the driver is sluggish with the regularity of callbacks, then the audio application is also not able to deliver on time, thus crackling and drop outs may occur or poor overall performance.
A generic driver can never be as good as a dedicated driver for a particular hardware.

Having just said all this, I still don’t see a reason why Philip’s Connexant shouldn’t work with ASIO4All or the GLLD. It must be something specific to just his system.

Perhaps running a dxdiag test and posting the results (zipped) would help someone track down the problem?

  1. Press and hold the windows key, and press r.

  2. In the Run dialogue type:

dxdiag
  1. In the DirectX Diagnotic Tool: Click Save All Information, instruct Windows where to save the resulting “DxDiag.txt” file (the desktop is a good place).

  2. With a Windows File Selector (or on the desktop if that’s where you saved it) Right click the “DxDiag.txt” file and choose “Send to/Compressed (zipped) folder”.

  3. Attach it to this thread.

I’ve been at work (school!) all day, so have only just started to try out some of your ideas (thanks for them!)

I’ve tried replacing the Lenovo (maker of my laptop) audio driver with the Windows 7 version using the exe file they provide from their website (auto-identifying the laptop.) No luck - no difference with Dorico - still no sound, despite trying various combinations of computer audio settings (frequency and number of bits) and loading/unloading Dorico playback settings and device settings. Sound continues to play normally outside Dorico (unless I have the ASIO excusivity option on.) I have not yet tried uninstalling the windows 10 audio drivers first before installing the windows 7 drivers, so might try that next. Meanwhile, here’s the dxdiag file requested.
Philip
DxDiag.zip (15.5 KB)

I’ve now tried everything suggested so far, and still no luck, sadly.

I did try first removing the windows 10 drivers and then substituting windows 7 drivers from Lenovo, but no difference. I’ve now replaced them again with the windows 10 drivers. I also tried changing the IDT High Definition Audio CODEC via Device Manager. However, it does not have this CODEC installed and already has the High Definition Audio Device. Changing it made no difference.

Playing around with the keyboard in the HALion Sonic editor window has occasionally produced the odd short squeak (of the correct pitch), especially immediately after reinstalling ASIO4ALL just now. But recently I have not heard this sound again. Lights flash and the level indicators show sound is being produced (whether using ASIO4ALL or the ASIO driver provided by Dorico), but nothing can be heard. I have also tried playing around with the small adjustments in ASIO4ALL suggested (e.g. “Always resample 44.1 kHz <-> 48 kHz” / “Force WDM Driver to 16-Bit”) to no avail. I’ve continued to adjust the sample frequency of the computer to match the driver.

However, sound CAN still be heard from other applications once Dorico has been shut down, so there is nothing wrong with my amplifier and speakers. And as mentioned before, Sibelius 8.6 continues to work fine (with its rather limited range of choral and orchestral sounds - hence my interest in Dorico!)

Any other thoughts? Does my DxDiag file reveal anything?

Philip

Is Sibelius using the current ASIO driver? If so, maybe we’re barking up the wrong tree…

Perhaps the drivers are good and something is up with Halion’s configuration?

Does Dorico come with the stand alone executable for Halion? ( I have a full version of Halion 6, so I’m not 100% sure how Dorico is packaged.)

If so, can you get Halion SE going outside Dorico (still looking for variables to eliminate…). If not, perhaps you can download the stand alone Halion 6 trial as an experiment. Sorry I don’t have any better or surer ideas, but this one has outmatched all my usual tricks…

I took a look at the DxDiag, but my eyes couldn’t find anything unusual. I also had once more a look at your log and project data that you posted in the beginning, still nothing suspicious.
I already wanted to ask you to try with ASIO4All again, but you did that already yourself. The fact that the HALion Editor window shows metering activity indicates that Dorico’s audio engine is running normally and producing audio data.
Why that data doesn’t come out of your speakers, to be honest, I have no clue anymore.
Do you maybe have a friend or colleague from whom you could borrow an external audio device and try with that? I’m 100% sure it would work with you with e.g. a Steinberg UR12 or UR22. But pick any other well know manufacturer, M-Audio, Focusrite, you name it, you will get sound out.

On the other hand, be warned though. The orchestral sounds that come with Dorico are pretty good, the choral sounds however are not so convincing, so don’t put your expectations too high. On the other hand, you can load other virtual instruments (and their sound libraries) into Dorico as well.

You are making a good point here. I don’t have a proper Dorico installation here at home, but the HALion Symphonic Orchestra installation (that is part of the full Dorico installation) should have the standalone player.
Philip, press the Windows key and type “HALion Symphonic Orchestra”, does it come up? Do you get sound with the standalone player. I should wonder if you do, but it is worth a try.

I don’t generally use Sibelius with ASIO4ALL, so no, I don’t think it is using any ASIO drivers.

When I signed up for the trial version of Dorico, I found I had three installers, one for Dorico, one for Halion SE, and one for the Halion Symphonic Orchestra. So I have installed all three. I’m not sure how to use the “standalone player”, but maybe you mean uninstalling just Dorico (with its ASIO driver that I have noticed seems to be part of it)? I can try that in the morning…

Philip

What he means here is that HALion Sonic 3 can be run as a stand-alone program, where you can just play it like a live instrument with your MIDI controllers. It also has a basic MIDI player and recorder built in.

To see if you have it tap your windows key and type “hal”. Do you get a start menu entry for “HALion Sonic SE”?

If so, click it and see what happens.

If not, you can download the installer for SE, run it, and reinstall. You should get the executable version of HALion SE then (possibly even an icon for it on your desktop).
You can find HALion SE3 here: HALion Sonic : Download for Free | Steinberg

Note that the content it can play will stop working when your Demo time for Dorico runs out (Or you buy Dorico, Cubase, Nuendo, HALion, Sonic, one of the VST Collections or Libraries, or download ‘free content’ for it, etc).

Right, so the standalone player works fine with my computer. I do notice that it is version 3, whereas the version of HALion Sonic SE packaged with Dorico is version 1.1, and I wonder if this is the problem. I still have not managed to get any sound when using Dorico. (In fact Dorico will not load with the standalone player installed, as it says it is waiting for a connection to the audio player.) I wonder if version 1.1 is incompatible with my machine? Still experimenting, but soon to give up…
Philip

I’m NOT saying you should give up - I’m one who hates giving up on issues like this, but I once did… Trying to get audio from Dorico on a MS Surface Pro (V1, but fully updated W10) was unsuccessful, despite having tried “every trick of the trade” at least twice. Audio from all other apps worked fine. When installed on a Surface Pro 4, however Dorico played fine. Maybe there is such a thing as completely incompatible hardware… Just my two cents…

Well that eliminates (in my mind) the computer’s hardware, the sound chip’s driver, and the ASIO driver as likely causes. The Halion SE standalone should use the same audio path as other other ASIO-based programs. Since Sibelius 8.6 runs OK on the laptop (and the diag program says there’s lots of memory available on the laptop), I pretty much would conclude there is plenty of horsepower to run Dorico.

This boils it down (again in my mind) to the Dorico setup.

I understand Philip’s frustration at this point. Therefore, I am suggesting (only if Phillip wants to continue) to uninstall all Steinberg products from the laptop. Then be sure to delete:

  • C:\Program Files\Steinberg
    C:\Program Files\Common Files\Steinberg
    C:\ProgramData\Steinberg (this one is hidden)
    C:\Program Files (x86)\Steinberg
    C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Steinberg
    C:\Users<user>\AppData\Roaming\Steinberg (also hidden)
    C:\Users<user>\AppData\Local\Steinberg* (hidden, there may be more than one folder)

Then, reinstall Dorico, Halion SE, and HSO from the original download.

Short of reinstalling the OS (or the “nuclear option” as some might call it), I’m really running out of ideas unless the guys at Steinberg have an idea.

HTH

You put it so nicely and clearly, that I decided to have one last go, and I uninstalled/reinstalled everything as recommended. Sadly, no luck. It would seem there is something fundamentally awry with Dorico with regard to sound, at least on my computer (and it seems I am not the only one.) I am, however, currently getting hold of an external USB audio device, so as to try to avoid the problem (and also latency issues with Sibelius). Perhaps the makers of Dorico might like to consider wrapping its trial version with version 3 of HALion Sonic, rather than version 1.1?
Thanks for your efforts, Traubitz and others.
Philip

I just downloaded your test file. If you look in play mode on the right panel (see image) the power button is off. Is it the same on your system? It will play on my machine once you turn that on. It doesn’t play from the downloaded file.
play mode power button is off.png

Thanks for giving it a try, Phillip. I think we’ve exhausted most of the remote diagnosis. There is possibly a software conflict somewhere in one of the libraries installed on your machine, but it’s not likely to pop up easily since you’re not actually crashing Dorico. Last time I came up against something so stubborn, it turned out to be a random beta of QT-kit (a common application developer library) which had been installed by a some rogue application in the Windows system32 directory rather than it’s proper place. Short of a full OS-wipe (which I do not recommend in this case!), it might be impossible to remedy unless you stumble across it at some future date. The outboard USB-audio device is probably your best and least painful solution route. I use Focusrite models on portable systems and RME on the high-buck Windows systems, but there are tons of excellent alternatives including Steinberg’s line.

Best of luck!

Thanks!

To dbudde: have tried turning the power button on/off, but still no sound.

Philip

Philip, Dorioc is currently bundled with HALion Sonic SE 2, but this will change in the future. However, HALion Sonic SE 3 is already now available as download from our website. You just need to have a valid license of Dorico, Cubase or Nuendo to make it work.
You speak of HSSE 1.1, is that really the version that you have? Maybe then you didn’t run the whole installer and are still stuck with 1.1. After a full Dorico installation you should be at least at HSSE 2.0.