Thanks for the head's up, but ACID seems to take over the soundcard just fine, but it still shows the message, and it shows it a lot, like sometimes every time I push "play"...

...to be blunt I think it's over-reacting to a non-issue, like it detects it doesn't currently have access to the soundcard, displays the message and then takes over the soundcard anyway. Like we could have ignored the act of displaying that message altogether, because again, ACID is actively taking over the soundcard by the time I have clicked off the message. At this point it's become a serious annoyance, and I think it started when I finally got ACID to recognize the ASIO drivers.

I'll look into preferences tab, I don't think I've poked around under the general settings too much, so maybe there's something there I'm missing.

Just out of curiosity, do you know if they have beta testers for the program, or are we the beta testers? Out of the box this thing is way too buggy to use in any real-world working sense, and I've literally spent the last 5 days trying to get it stable enough to actually do something with it, but so far no luck. I'll squash one bug and two more pop up to take its place, like this issue---I got the ASIO drivers working and it starts popping up with this error message, and again, as near as I can tell it's actually taking over the soundcard just fine, but it seems to be popping up the message prematurely.

I'm currently running Cubase, Reaper, Acid 7, and Ardour on three different machines in two different locations, and none of them gave me remotely even close to the set-up headaches this is giving me, especially when it comes to older VSTs, and I would really-really-really like a modern version of ACID up and running smoothly, but just yesterday I had to do some electronic drum tracks and opted to do it in ACID 7, which hands down runs better on a 64bit Windows machine than the 64bit version of ACID I am currently struggling with.

are you using an ASIO driver? typically these are exclusive access irrespective of whether a host app attempts to free it when not in use.

There have been public betas in the past, for people holding a valid license for the current version, but as of today there isn't an active beta in progress.

I always use ASIO drivers(Realtek, ASIO4ALL, and the Zoom ASIO drivers--depending on which program/device I am using), it took a couple of hours though to get ACID to let me run it, not sure why, but eventually a reinstall allowed me to get off of the Rewire drivers. I'd switch it to ASIO, hit apply, close preferences, open up preferences again and it would be right back to Rewire....

...that was around the time the play button stopped working altogether, which is another issue, but the reinstall seems to have fixed it for the time being.

I

There is a recent ASIO4ALL driver that has been released. You may want to give that a try to see if that solves your problem since you mentioned you're using that driver. What I heard is they added functionality to allow 2 apps to use the same ASIO devices at the same time and worked out some of those problems associated with newer Windows 10 systems.

https://www.gearnews.com/asio4all-gets-a-revamp-and-proper-intel-sst-support/

You haven't really narrowed down the specifics of the problem for anyone to provide any specific help. You stated while having multiple programs open, but you haven't taken any efforts to narrow down 2 specific programs since one is obviously locking up the sound card and not letting Acid have access to it.

I also own Reaper, so I can speak more to the specifics of that program. Reaper also has a close audio device setting when not the active application in it's general preferences. Have you checked that setting to verify it's turned on? It's not activated by default.

What Reaper doesn't have is a "Close Midi device" when not the active application. So if you are trying to use the same midi device with Acid and Reaper open at the same time, it won't work. This is the fault of Reaper not providing that feature, not Acid. The way to overcome that would be to manually deselect the midi device inside of Reaper. I mentioned this in my original post but you haven't really provided any further investigation details. Sorry, if you're not willing to do some investigations based on suggestions to narrow down the problem then it's going to be difficult to assist you. Just because Acid is displaying the message doesn't always mean Acid is the problem when you have multiple audio/midi programs open at the same time. I can get Reaper to display a similar message if I select in the Acid preferences to not close the audio device. Does that now mean Reaper has a problem?

No it doesn't, it means Acid is locking up the audio device since that is what I have it set as and Reaper is letting me know that. You need to check the other apps and see what their settings are set at and if you aren't willing/able to open up those preference settings and change/check them, then you aren't going to get this problem solved.

The ASIO4ALL updated driver may be an easier option for you if it works and you won't have to dig into those preference settings since it may handle those scenarios for you. However, I'm not currently using ASIO4ALL so can't say for certain.

Clean reboot, nothing else open, NOTHING, just ACID, and random system processes, ASIO drivers updated immediately before the reboot--and I'm still getting the error message, again, there is nothing to conflict with other than Windows itself at this point:

Clean reboot, nothing else open, NOTHING, just ACID, and random system processes, ASIO drivers updated immediately before the reboot--and I'm still getting the error message, again, there is nothing to conflict with other than Windows itself at this point:

Sorry, I misunderstood your initial description then.

Have you tried the new ASIO4ALL driver? It's suppose to fix some Windows specific issues. May want to try some different audio driver selection options in Acid as well if that doesn't work. The Waves Classic driver tends to always work.

I can tell you I have not experienced the same problem with Acid Pro 10 which indicates the problem you're experiencing is therefore likely system sound card driver related. Since you're using the "Realtek and ASIO4ALL" drivers, that indicates you're using a very inexpensive onboard generic sound card since most pro level sound cards come with their own ASIO driver and Realtek is as cheap as they come.

I always use ASIO drivers(Realtek, ASIO4ALL, and the Zoom ASIO drivers--depending on which program/device I am using), it took a couple of hours though to get ACID to let me run it, not sure why, but eventually a reinstall allowed me to get off of the Rewire drivers. I'd switch it to ASIO, hit apply, close preferences, open up preferences again and it would be right back to Rewire....

...that was around the time the play button stopped working altogether, which is another issue, but the reinstall seems to have fixed it for the time being.

I

I just re-read this again. If the driver is showing as "Rewire" that indicates Acid is in use by another program as a Rewire plugin device. Open up Task Manager and see what is running in the background if you're not actually running another audio program. All signs seem to point to another audio program is running. Possibly something on startup is running in the background? That "Rewire" driver won't even show up as a selectable driver unless Acid is in Rewire slave operation mode where another audio program has to put it in that mode.

You are correct, this machine is using a generic onboard soundcard. I haven't hooked up an interface to it since ACID has been installed--it's not my recording computer, but I do mixing on it. I do all of my tracking out in the shed, and use a Zoom r16 for drums(it has 8 inputs), and I use an MBox and Fostex interface for tracking everything else.

The Rewire drivers no longer even show up as an option after the reinstall--I never installed them myself, and do not remember ever seeing them before ACID was installed, so I am assuming they came with ACID. They are gone now, which is also odd because I never uninstalled them manually, so they had to get uninstalled when removing Acid(it's the only major change to this machine)--not sure why they weren't reinstalled with Acid...

...another odd bit with drivers is that Acid 10 doesn't see my my Zoom ASIO drivers, even though they are clearly installed on my system, note that Reaper sees them, Acid does not--Acid 7 sees them but just lists them as "generic ASIO" drivers, along with the Realtek, and ASIO4All drivers, ACID 10 does not see them, and the ASIO4ALL driver were updated less than 5 hours ago they are current and up-to-date: