Sound card problem

This is a widespread problem with Vista and its crappy/misunderstood/bad childhood audio implementation. - Try disabling system sounds, the "MS GS Wavetable Synth" and any application that does something with audio and is being started automatically. - Try if playing with the "exclusive mode" (for your X-Fi) helps : - Since ASIO4ALL can combine all found devices and their drivers, disabling the onboard sound device(s) listed there could help maybe, or try disabling them in the BIOS.

I went into the loudspeaker properties as you suggested. I played with all the permutations of the exclusive mode while testing Reaper and playing a song with Windows Media player. It's always the same thing: he who wins over the other is the one that was started first. Then checked all the parameters of Asio4All. the onboard sound was disabled. Then I checked the wavetable synth but there's no option to disable it with x-fi (at least none that I'm aware of). Then I checked if the onboard audio was disabled. It wasn't. But... Still the problem remains. I'll reboot and see if it works.

Yeah I figured, meanwhile I googled a bit more and it seems there's no fix for this problem. I'm having the same here on Vista but in a slightly less severe way, sometimes I can switch to another app when Reaper stays maximized, I bring the other audio app window into focus and Reaper in the background switches to "offline" mode. The "Launch file" button in the render dialog always works. However, the only ways to get rid of this seem to be "don't try to use more than 1 audio app at a time" or "use XP". I recommend the latter, Vista is partially bombing us back into the 80s audiowise.