Hello everyone here, after many different attempts, I no longer know what to try in order to get my sound card under ‘sound input settings’. Has anyone had the same problem and maybe found a solution? Thanx, Tom.
Negative for me. Works as you would expect. I assume you are on V1.0? Windows? Mac? I assume you are using an external soundcard on a laptop? What have you tried? I’d say if you are able and or willing, to post a brief video (unlisted YouTube since you can’t post video directly in forum) or maybe pictures, but I feel like it would just be a photo of a drop down without the sc you want to use.
Forgot to mention…win10 pro, all latest drivers, tried couple of different soundcards, nothing…
I have the same issue using win11. Lib version 1.0. Also up to date. I’ve been using a midiclock but it’s not optimal for timeline mode.
Quite simply, I have nothing to choose from, nothing appears in the dropdown list, no matter which sound card I connect to the computer. I’ve checked everything possible: permissions, drivers, Windows exclusivity settings, registries in case something got messed up… after all, absolutely every other program works perfectly fine.
Hi everyone - and sorry you’re having trouble with this.
Unfortunately, Windows sound drivers can be a total nightmare. I was actually having a problem where certain bad or buggy ASIO/WASAPI drivers would crash Liberation just by querying them to see if they existed!
After doing some digging I found quite a few reports from other developers about this, so I ended up adding a small “block list” of driver names that Liberation ignores for safety.
At the moment the block list includes anything with these phrases:
"generic low latency"
"generic asio"
"usb audio asio"
"wdm-to-asio"
"asio4all"
"vb-audio"
"hd audio"
If your sound card driver happens to contain one of those strings, it won’t appear in the dropdown. Now I’m looking at it again I think I’ve probably been a bit over-cautious, so if you can all tell me the exact name of the drivers you’re expecting to see, I can check it and make sure it’s allowed in the next update.
It’s also worth trying an older version such as 0.9.6. I added this protection around June (in 0.9.9), so if the driver appears in 0.9.6 but not in 1.0.0, that would confirm it’s being blocked rather than simply not detected. Because if it’s the latter then we have some more fun problems to fix! 
Thanks so much for reporting it - these edge cases are really useful for me to iron out.
Seb.
I’m using UAD and Presonus, but let’s focus on UAD, specifically the Volt interfaces. They are vendor-specific drivers. Hmm…gonna try with older version od Liberation then.
If you could tell me exactly how they show up in other software, that would be helpful. IE what name do they display?
I don’t understand what you mean. If you mean - the name of my audio device in other software, It’s either VOLT 4, VOLT 2, or VOLT 1, depending on which one I’m using. Windows says Speakers (Volt 4). TBH i don’t know how it show up in eg. Propellerhead Reason, i’m not in my studio atm. Also, just tried older version, same thing, nothing changes.
Thanks for confirming that - since it doesn’t show up in the older version either, it’s not related to the driver-name filtering I mentioned.
A couple of things still worth checking:
-
Windows privacy permissions Go to Settings → Privacy & security → Microphone and make sure “Allow desktop apps to access your microphone” is turned on. I gather that some ASIO drivers still rely on that permission to expose their inputs properly.
-
Make sure no other app is using the Volt driver I think on Windows, drivers can only be accessed by one program at a time. If another app (like a DAW or audio utility) has it open, Liberation won’t see it until that program is closed.
Also worth checking that Liberation isn’t being run as administrator, as that can sometimes prevent user-registered drivers from being visible.
Windows really doesn’t make this easy, but we’ll get to the bottom of it.
Seb
Nope, checked all of that couple of times…Also, when I click on the MIDI input settings, in the dropdown menu I can select ‘None’, but in the audio settings there is nothing, it’s just empty, nothing drops down, not even “none”.
That does sound really frustrating - especially when everything else seems to recognise your Volt interfaces but Liberation just shows a blank list. From what you’ve described, it sounds like the audio system I use (RtAudio) isn’t getting any devices back from Windows at all. It polls all available inputs when Liberation starts up, and if even one of them crashes or hangs during that process, it can stop the whole list from coming through.
I’ve seen that happen before on setups with several ASIO or virtual-audio drivers installed - sometimes a single bad driver can block the rest. It might be worth temporarily disabling or uninstalling any you don’t need (things like ASIO4ALL, VB-Audio, virtual cables, or old interface drivers), then restarting to see if that helps.
(Just so you know, the audio dropdown doesn’t include a “None” option - there’s a separate Disconnect button for that - so if the list is completely empty, it really does mean that Windows didn’t return any devices at all, not just that the Volt didn’t appear.)
For what it’s worth, my own Windows system does see all of my audio devices - even the built-in microphone - so I know it can work
If you’re still seeing nothing after that, it’s likely something deeper inside RtAudio’s detection process before Liberation even gets the results. I really wish I had an easier fix for you - honestly, the Windows audio system is such a wild mix of layers and drivers that I’m amazed any software manages to talk to it successfully
Seb
Yeah, Windows can be pretty tricky sometimes… I’ll try installing it on another PC later today and see what happens. I was just hoping it would work because I have some kind of event over the weekend and I wanted to try out there what I want.
Interestingly, on my desktop PC (also Intel CPU 9th gen and motherboard, same generation) it shows my audio device. Hmm… I mean, everything else always works perfectly without a problem on my notebook (problem happens on my Lenovo ThinkPad notebook) except Liberation, so it’s a bit of a problem for me to uninstall/reinstall everything just to find where the issue is because i use it all the time. For now I’ll have to think of another solution, unless you find something soon 
Little update: so, on this desktop pc it did show the sound card, but it didn’t work. I still had to install version 0.9.6. Now it works, but there’s a weird glitch (and honestly, I think it happens to me regardless of the version, but I’ll check again). For the first second and a half to two seconds when I trigger the pattern, the scan rate shoots up “to the sky” and then drops down to the set speed. That’s a bit bad for the galvos, especially if they’re at full size. But at least the sound works now.
…seems to be working just fine so far
