Windows: Renoise is very slow to react when selecting another sound card

Help, Support & Bugs
1

For some reason, when selecting another sound card in Windows 11 with Renoise running, Renoise seems to momentarily hang for several seconds giving the impression that it is going to crash.

To test this, I have several sound cards installed:

  • A dedicated sound card
  • The sound card for the image monitor
  • An external USB sound card (a DAC)
  • Wireless headphones

So, when switching between cards, it seems like a “delicate” affair.

I know I can run the “Reinitialize” button, in Preferences/Audio.

But if you don’t have this window open and ready, you’re going to get this little and annoying crash. Couldn’t this be optimized?

That is, can’t Renoise automatically detect when the user switches sound cards and automatically run the equivalent of pressing the Reinitialize button without the user noticing?

Switching sound cards from Windows 11 options should not affect the stability of Renoise.

The user gets the feeling that they have to wait a few seconds with the mouse pointer “thinking” until it “unlocks”. While this is happening it is best not to touch anything of Renoise, because you could generate a critical crash.

2

What drivers, sound cards are you using? What are you switching from, to? I don’t think that’s a genereral problem, so we do need a bit more of info here.

3

I’ll have to experiment a bit with this issue, as it seems to be somewhat random. Is it possible that some instrument plugin is causing this?

At the moment, I can say that I’m using the latest drivers available from Creative for the Sound Blaster ZXR (from the Sound Blaster Command package). I mention this because I suspect it’s the case with this card, but I should experiment more with different song configurations.

I simply go into the Windows audio control panel and change the sound card there.

This is the setup I use here. I will experiment more here when I have time and try to detect the problem, at least visually…