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[sjhilton]

Hi, I've just installed the Windows 10 April 2018 update and I'm having some issues with my Sound Blaster Z and the JRiver MC24 WDM driver - specifically with the digital input and the analog input (What U Hear) playing through the WDM driver.

If I select 'listen to device' in the WDM driver (so the input plays sound to the WDM driver) I get constant low level noise, which starts playing in JRiver in my WDM zone. There is also no playback through the WDM driver if I start playback through my external audio device.

I've isolated this to the WDM driver as the inputs work with the default sound card that I use for playback in JRiver. It doesn't appear to be a Sound Blaster Z issue (although these drivers are notorious for misbehaving when upgrading between Windows 10 versions).

Has anyone else had similar issues? Any thoughts on how to resolve this?

This all worked perfectly under the previous version of Windows 10 so I'm tempted to roll back if there isn't an obvious fix.

Thanks in advance!

[RD James]

Usually after big updates like this, you have to reinstall third-party sound and video drivers for them to work correctly in my experience.
Windows tends to replace the device drivers with ones from Windows Update, and the software doesn't work correctly with them.

[sjhilton]

That's been my experience in the past too, and I reinstalled the Sound Blaster drivers and the WDM driver multiple times before I posted. Microsoft has made changes to the user interface for the sound drivers etc in this version so it's possible that's causing a problem (although I suspect most of these changes are cosmetic).

[RD James]

I don't have a Sound Blaster Z in my system any more, but my X-Fi is still working just fine.
You do have to completely uninstall the drivers first though, you can't just install on top of the existing setup.
 
The WDM driver doesn't work at all for me since the upgrade to MC24.

[sjhilton]

So just to update I have persisted with the latest version of Windows 10. In short I'm still having essentially the same issue I originally posted about after uninstalling, reinstalling various drivers and doing a fresh install of MC24. The WDM zone continuously plays (even if something else is playing in JRiver using the same device in exclusive mode).

Preventing WDM zone playing in exclusive mode (in audio settings) and setting up zone switch to force everything other than WDM traffic to another zone has pretty much solved all of my playback issues as that stops playback in the WDM zone momentarily and allows the other media to start playing in another zone and for whatever reason that also allows playback via the digital-in when required.

There is still something odd happening with the WDM driver, because if I select 'Default Playback Device' in the windows sound recording settings as the device to play the Sound Blaster Z digital-in it won't play in JRiver even though WDM is the default device. If I set the WDM driver as the playback device then it works. This could of course be something to do with the Sound Blaster drivers as well.

If I discover what the actual problem/fix is I'll post again.

[RD James]

I'm curious about why you are playing audio to the sound card, and then also routing that audio to Media Center via the "what u hear" device, rather than playing audio to the WDM driver directly.
 
Anyway, I wonder if the new privacy options might be what is causing the problem for you.
If you disable microphone access, it prevents all applications (Win32) from accessing those devices. Prior to 1803, I believe there was only the option to prevent apps (UWP) from accessing the microphone.
You can still disable the option for apps, but microphone access must be enabled to use the "what u hear" device or any other recording device on the system.

[sjhilton]

Thanks RD James for the suggestion. I just checked it and that setting is already on for some reason (I probably turned it on when I was trying Cortana a year or two back?) So I don't think that's it. There's a list of standard Windows 10 apps there and one mystery one: Win32WebViewHost. I've turned that on in case that's something to do with JRiver. I'll see if that makes a difference.

I'm using JRiver as an audio pre-processor for my Chromecast. I'm splitting the hdmi signal from my Chromecast to hdmi and spdif, and the spdif runs to the digital-in (not the analog 'what you hear') on the Sound Blaster Z. It works really well (or it has until now). It means I don't need to worry about running Netflix, Youtube and anything with Google cast capability through the web browser on the PC. I just change the HDMI input on the TV. The only downside is that you're limited to one bit/sample rate and a set number of channels on the digital-in.