Solved Mystery Audio Monitor With Reverb Running All The Time

Hi all. I have recently been helping someone with their laptop setup for music production using Cubase (14 Pro). The specs provided in my account are the specs for that laptop.

The laptop has built-in speakers and a built-in microphone, as usual for laptops these days. It also has a Steinberg UR22C plugged in via USB, which is itself connected to an external pair of speakers and an external microphone (through a bunch of other audio equipment whose purpose I don't fully understand, although the laptop's owner does). These are what the user uses for audio recording and playback when working with Cubase. Recently I was trying to diagnose a problem wherein the audio output was not working, which I managed to fix after fiddling around in Cubase's settings, including Cubase's control panel for the Steinberg built-in ASIO driver. (The "working" state after this fix was that audio output from Cubase was going to the external speakers, and input was coming from the external mic. This is the intended setup.)

However, I unknowingly introduced another issue while fixing the first one, which is that there's now a reverby audio input monitor working all the time with no clear cause. That is to say: the external speakers are constantly outputting the input to the external mic plus a significant reverb effect. (For example, saying "echo!" into the mic makes the speakers say "echooo!" back to you.) This persists even when Cubase is closed, and after a reboot (it comes back in before sign-in, just after the lock screen loads). It does stop when the computer is powered off or the UR22C is disconnected, which suggests to me that this isn't caused by the equipment itself; this is corroborated by the statement of the laptop's owner, which is that the equipment doesn't have the capability to produce the reverb effect on its own.

Apart from closing Cubase and rebooting, here's what else I've tried:

• Changing the driver used by Cubase from the Steinberg built-in ASIO driver to the generic low-latency audio driver (which is a legacy version of the same thing): this stopped audio input working in Cubase for some reason, but had no impact on the audio monitor.
• Disabled the relevant output device, and then input device, in Control Panel: had no effect on the audio monitor
• Checked task manager for running processes which looked like they might be causing it: nothing suspicious
• Checked the computer for separate audio control panel software which might be causing it: no other appropriate audio software that I could find
• Unplugged the UR22C: this stopped the audio monitor, but it came back when plugged back in
• Checked task manager and the startup and common startup directories for startup programs which might be causing it: nothing suspicious in either place

I'm at my wit's end trying to figure out what might have caused this. The way it ignores Windows' audio settings reminds me of Cubase's normal ASIO driver settings, but I don't understand how it can be persisting when Cubase is already closed. I would really appreciate any suggestions for how to debug why this is happening.

Maybe Process Monitor??? Process Monitor - Sysinternals

I solved it! It turns out that the UR22C audio interface is designed to work with this software package called dspMixFx, which is provided by Yamaha (who manufacture the digital signal processing (DSP) chip for the UR22C). That program was installed on the laptop and was doing the reverb effect. You can go in to that program and turn off the reverb effect by fiddling with the settings, as described in this forum post. (We had to actually click on the "e" and then manually change the Yamaha rev-X settings.) The audio monitor is still there but the reverb has gone, which is what the laptop owner wants, so the problem is solved. Thanks for the reply -- I didn't get the chance to use Process Monitor but it may well have led me to dspMixFx -- I just found the linked forum post first.