Recording When Audition is not the Active Window

I've only see one other reference to this problem on the internet, and I couldn't find any help there, so I thought I would try to ask here.

When I used to work with audition, I would use an external host as a VSTi soft-synth program, in order to record pretty much everything I did. That was back when I had Audition 2.0. However, recently, when I tried doing this again, Audition would pause every time I switched to a different window.

So, then I got Audition 3.0.

I thought it was worth it, seemed to fix the problem... but then after a couple promising attempts, it started having the same problem again.

It really is a trifle if I can't record anything other than microphone and etc. Soft-synths are valuable, and useful to me.

My relevant specs are: Windows XP, Creative Soundblaster X-fi Platinum sound-card.

Any help at all would be appreciated. Cheers.

[unchecked]

If you are using ASIO drivers, then go to Edit|Audio Hardware Setup|Edit View (and/or Multitrack View) and make sure the box 'Release ASIO driver in Backgound' is unchecked.

I found that same advice in the only thread I could find on this topic, and sadly, it didn't solve my problem.

Thank you for your reply though. If you have any other suggestions, I would be happy to try them.

I found that same advice in the only thread I could find on this topic, and sadly, it didn't solve my problem.

Do you by any chance happen to have two instances of Audition running? That would be enough to screw the active selection switch...

I found that same advice in the only thread I could find on this topic, and sadly, it didn't solve my problem.

Do you by any chance happen to have two instances of Audition running? That would be enough to screw the active selection switch...

... or any other application which is using ASIO.  ASIO can only handle one instance (nothing you can do about that, it's the way it works).

No, I only have on instance of Audition running.

But, that bit about one instance of an ASIO using application sheds some light on the situation. Are you saying that if I have ASIO drivers on my soundcard, I'm incapable of running more than one program that uses sound? I tried setting Audition to use direct-sound drivers instead, and I tried the same with the program I'm using for my VSTi synths - it didn't solve the problem.

Is there any way I can record with Audition not as the active window if I have ASIO at all?

Thank you for the help so far, at least I know what the problem is now.

Are you saying that if I have ASIO drivers on my soundcard, I'm incapable of running more than one program that uses sound?

Yes - that's about the strength of it.  That's why there is an option within AA to release the driver when you change focus, that allows another application to take over the ASIO driver.  Of course, if the other application doesn't let go of the driver when you change focus, then you have no access to ASIO from anything else.

Yes - that's about the strength of it.  That's why there is an option within AA to release the driver when you change focus, that allows another application to take over the ASIO driver.  Of course, if the other application doesn't let go of the driver when you change focus, then you have no access to ASIO from anything else.

Actually, that's not quite the case... What Audition, or any other ASIO app does is to hold onto the ASIO channels it's currently got assigned to it, and these are the only ones that can be controlled by the software. So if you have some of your ASIO channels assigned to Sonar, and some more assigned to Audition, whatever you do with Audition won't affect the channels Sonar is using in the slightest.

At least that's the way it's supposed to be, and certainly that's how it is with my E-Mu 1820m. Whether all ASIO drivers behave like this (ie, correctly) I don't know - but they should.

And is there any way to assign certain channels to certain programs, or is that a 'have or have not', 'smart' behavioral thing for every sound card?

And is there any way to assign certain channels to certain programs, or is that a 'have or have not', 'smart' behavioral thing for every sound card?

Assuming that the card's driver is able to cope with this, it's something for the host programs to cope with. Certainly within Audition, you can select which ASIO channels you are going to use. In the particular case of my E-Mu 1820m (and any other PatchMix card) you can also determine from within the setup program whether a particular ASIO pair are going to be available at all, even - but that's definitely one step beyond what most soundcards would do.

In theory, if you have software that grabs all of the available ASIO channels when it starts (do any actually do this?), then the options to share wouldn't exist, obviously. Which might be a bit of a pain.

The one thing you absolutely can't do though is use more than one soundcard with ASIO - unless the manuafacturer's driver can fool the ASIO system into thinking that more than one instance is all actually the same card. Then, of course, you can. But the absolute no-no is mixing different cards. Your only hope of doing this is to use ASIO4ALL's WDM spoofer for ASIO-only apps.