Is there a way to hear the raw audio going computer -> usb -> fm3 -> headphones?

If Input 1 Source is set to Analog, there is no USB audio being sent to the grid regardless of which USB output you choose. Something else is going on here.

Sonar's audio settings are completely independent from your Windows audio settings. Sonar has it's own audio engine and does not use the Windows engine at all. In Sonar, go to Edit > Preferences > Audio to get to the various audio device settings. Make sure you choose ASIO for the driver mode and choose the FM3's inputs and outputs. Also, make sure your sampling rate is set to 48 kHz and 24 bit.

Windows system audio does not support ASIO drivers and will use WDM drivers instead. It will only be able to access the first two USB outputs when set to stereo output (the default), so there's very little chance that your audio output from YouTube or any other basic Windows audio output is going to anything other than USB Outputs 1 and 2.
 
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mr_fender said:
If Input 1 Source is set to Analog, there is no USB audio being sent to the grid regardless of which USB output you choose. Something else is going on here.

Sonar's audio settings are completely independent from your Windows audio settings. Sonar has it's own audio engine and does not use the Windows engine at all. In Sonar, go to Edit > Preferences > Audio to get to the various audio device settings. Make sure you choose ASIO for the driver mode and choose the FM3's inputs and outputs. Also, make sure your sampling rate is set to 48 kHz and 24 bit.

Windows system audio does not support ASIO drivers and will use WDM drivers instead. It will only be able to access the first two USB outputs when set to stereo output (the default), so there's very little chance that your audio output from YouTube or any other basic Windows audio output is going to anything other than USB Outputs 1 and 2.
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agreed.

i think if he can load a completely blank preset, play computer audio, and can hear it, then it is definitely not going through the grid, not affected by Preset choice at all, and we can clear that notion from the troubleshooting process.

once that's definitely cleared up, we can focus on other areas.
 
wwl3 said:
@chris @GlennO Thanks for the help narrowing down the issue. Unfortunately I'm not seeing any settings in Sonar that would specify usb 1/2. My issue isnt only from Sonar though. If I play a youtube video through the FM3 I have the same problem where some frequencies are softer or louder than others, the same as in Sonar. Is there maybe a windows setting? Also if it matters, I never hear delay/reverb on the computer audio, it's only changing the volume levels of different frequencies, if that makes a difference to what could be causing it. Anyway, thanks for your time
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Speculating but based on this it could be a sample frequency mismatch. The FM3 if I’m not mistaken is 48khz and afaik that can’t be altered.

Test this in sonar and record something at 48khz and see what happens?

Sean Meredith-Jones
 
You could also try this in windows:

Start—-> devices—-> sound settings——> device properties ——> additional device properties——> advanced.

Select 24bit 48khz and then click apply and see what happens.

Sean Meredith-Jones
 
chris said:
what happens if you pull up a completely blank preset? does computer audio play at all? if it does, that means computer audio is not being sent through the preset at all in any case. if we can get a solid answer on that, we can stop worrying about USB 3/4 or anything Preset related.
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If I'm on a blank preset I do hear audio. It still sounds wrong, with not much bass, and the drums are extremely loud compared to the other parts. I tested this playing youtube, so it's nothing to do with my daw.

I was wrong about different presets sounding different. Playing a youtube to test this morning it sounded the same across different presets, including a blank one. (My test case for this before had been remembering hearing things differently when tracking using different presets, but I had the volume on the FM3 set differently while using different presets, so that's probably why I thought that)
 
smj said:
You could also try this in windows:

Start—-> devices—-> sound settings——> device properties ——> additional device properties——> advanced.

Select 24bit 48khz and then click apply and see what happens.

Sean Meredith-Jones
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It's already set to that, but good thought
 
Can I get a sanity check? Could someone please play this through their computer, and then compare it to playing in their headphones through FM3? For me, at 12 seconds in on the fm3 those drums are way louder than everything else, and I'm not hearing some of the other parts at all, the bass in particular. I'm wondering if maybe it's like that for everyone through FM3 "working as intended"?

 
Check your speaker configuration in Windows. Right click the speaker icon in the system tray down by the clock and choose "Sounds". Choose the Playback tab, select the FM3 in the device list, and click the "Configure" button. Make sure you select Stereo and not Surround.

Also, make sure Output 1 is set to Stereo in the I/O menu.
 
wwl3 said:
It's already set to that, but good thought
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It probably won’t have any impact on playing YouTube videos. They’re not 48k and I don’t think the computer will upsample it.

I would expect it to have more of an impact on a daw session. You’d have to start the session from scratch at 48k. If you’re playing back a session at 44.1k or 96k or higher… I don’t think the FM3 would work via USB. If you really want to monitor through the FM3… analog might be the best bet.

Sean Meredith-Jones
 
Whether the sampling rate is the issue or not, I’m a little baffled why more digital devices don’t give the option to change the sample rate. Helix defaults to 96khz. The Fm3 defaults to 48khz. Both are useful but not all the time.

Sean Meredith-Jones
 
Most DAWs can resample to whatever sample rate you need on the fly. That's all the Helix and other adjustable rate devices are doing anyway. Doubling the sample rate to 96 kHz means there's now twice as much data for the CPU/DSP to process in the same amount of time. If you change the sample rate on the device and the CPU load doesn't also change, you know it's just resampling.
 
wwl3 said:
If I'm on a blank preset I do hear audio. It still sounds wrong, with not much bass, and the drums are extremely loud compared to the other parts. I tested this playing youtube, so it's nothing to do with my daw.

I was wrong about different presets sounding different. Playing a youtube to test this morning it sounded the same across different presets, including a blank one. (My test case for this before had been remembering hearing things differently when tracking using different presets, but I had the volume on the FM3 set differently while using different presets, so that's probably why I thought that)
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So is the issue with headphones only?
 
chris said:
So is the issue with headphones only?
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I mean, it's something related to the fm3. If I use the same headphones plugged into the computer everything sounds right. It's only when the headphones are plugged into the fm3 that the audio sounds wrong.

In case it's important, playing guitar that I hear through the headphones of the fm3 sounds great. Same with bass. It's just computer audio through usb to fm3 that is having some weird different volumes on different frequencies

Also, recording guitar over the same usb cable sounds great on the computer, so that makes me think it's not a bad cable
 
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