Bitwig Taking Over Disabled Outputs on Interface

[bluebrain]

Hi, new to Bitwig and i have an 8 channel interface and using asio on win 11:

ive disabled two of the outputs 3/4 in bitwig audio settings to use for other apps.. bitwig still fully takes over and control of these outputs when windows is in both exclusive/non exclusive mode, stopping me from being able to use the outputs for other apps.

i do not have this problem with cubase / ableton which perform as expected by simply not using outputs 3/4 when they are deselected, meaning i can use the outputs for other apps

is this behaviour as expected in bitwig please or is there a setting / workaround anyone is using?

thank you

[fde101]

Not the biggest expert on this one (any serious music work gets done on a Mac where this issue does not exist), but my understanding is that when Windows gives an app exclusive access to an interface, it works at the level of the entire interface, not just individual channels - so if Bitwig gets exclusive control of *any* channels of an interface, it gets exclusive control of *all* of them, "disabled" or not.

Possible workarounds might be to use a different ASIO driver, to use a separate interface for other apps, or to switch to a different operating system.

Others who have fought with this might be able to offer other suggestions.

[BobDog]

That’s what I thought but the OP says that other Daws don’t do this. I was confused by this.

I do know that very recent versions of windows allow shared outputs but not inputs so maybe something to do with that?