RME Babyface Pro - PC System Audio Issue

[eox08]

Hi all,

I am experiencing a strange issue that has been hard to properly research to find a solution for.

I run Ableton 11 Suite as my primary DAW with my RME Babyface Pro Audio Interface. So here's the issue and how I discovered it and hoping to find a solution.

I am working on a project right now inside Ableton. I decided to do some research on a solution to stream my audio from my PC (Ideally straight from Ableton) to my iPhone (mix check). I landed on a solution called Airfoil. I downloaded Airfoil and the app on my phone. The iPhone and my PC connected via Airfoil. I chose initially Ableton as the source audio to stream over to my iPhone. I hit play and received no audio. I then saw that "System Audio" was an option to stream from my PC to my iPhone. I selected that and still got nothing. Perplexed I began doing some digging.

Years ago I downloaded a Rainmeter Spectrum Analyzer for my PC. I enjoy the visuals when running Ableton. This always worked for me without issue. I could hit play on Ableton and my Rainmeter Spectrum Analyzer would bounce around as intended. Well, when I noticed I wasn't getting any audio over Airfoil I looked to see if my rainmeter plugin was receiving any signal. It wasn't. Then I opened up youtube to test and began play audio. Audio was playing through my RME without issue and the spectrum analyzer plugin from Rainmeter was responding accordingly. This tells me there is a disconnect somewhere between my RME Totamix and my PC system speakers.

I went into my pc settings - sounds - speakers and confirmed that my RME Speakers channel is set as the default device. However I cannot get audio from Ableton to register on my PC as "system audio". Therefore I am unable to stream any audio from Ableton to my iPhone via Airfoil. Now if I play a song on youtube on my PC I receive the audio just fine on my iPhone via Airfoil.

I have tried disabling all WDM Devices (setting it to 0) restarting my RME Babyface Pro via unplugging & plugging it back in. Made the WDM devices go from 0 to 1 then all the way up to 6. I have played in the TotalMix to route audio to different channels for the output but nothing will seems to work with me trying to get the audio from Ableton to my RME Babyface Pro as "system audio". Now I hear audio through my headphone jack on my RME device without issue. But I discovered that since Ableton's master out audio isn't registering as "system audio" to my TotalMix/RME AI it's implying there is a disconnect somewhere.

Keep in mind I use to be able to have all audio from Ableton to register as system audio without issue. Now I cannot get it to work at all.

Any advice or help on this issue? I am familiar with leveraging Loopback for recording system audio back into Ableton without issue but I am essentially trying to do the reverse. Simply trying to get my PC's "system audio" (Ableton project) to send audio to my RME device and my RME device to send audio as "system audio" so I can simply stream my audio from Airfoil to my iPhone.

[BertKoor]

I suspect it's the ASIO driver protocol.
The only reason this is low latency is because it totally bypasses all audio abstraction layers of Windows. Ableton streams audio directly to the RME DAC. Windows (and apps) have no mechanisms to intercept audio.

[Haptix]

This Airfoil?

Screenshot 2022-04-11 095852.png

https://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/

How did you install it on your PC? They have "Airfoil Satellite" for windows, but thats a receiver as far as I could understand.
https://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/satellite/windows/

The perfect Airfoil companion
Airfoil Satellite is an audio receiver and remote control for Airfoil. Use it to turn any Windows machine into an audio receiver, to remotely control Airfoil, or even to turn a PC into a receiver for audio from iOS.

I feel really confused atm.