VirtualMIDISynth and Radeon driver

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Posts: 19
Joined: 16 Giu 2016 - 19:07
VirtualMIDISynth and Radeon driver

Hello Claudio,

I've been noticing an odd behaviour for a few months now, and it took me some time to actually pinpoint the culprit.

Basically, every time I update my Radeon driver to its latest version (19.2.2 as of today), the VirtualMIDISynth driver just disappears. The VMS application itself is fine (it's still loaded at boot time) and my settings are basically intact, except the driver has been removed and it can't be selected in the MIDI mapper. I have to relaunch the VMS installer to make it reappear, and it will remain available until the next Radeon update.

I've confirmed this to happen with VMS 2.4.1, 2.5.4 and the latest 2.6 beta. None of my other MIDI drivers (Munt, LoopMIDI, MIDISport Uno) are impacted. I'm not sure if something can be done on your side, but I wanted to make you know about this strange caveat.

Posts: 1972
Joined: 25 Mar 2012 - 01:19
Re: VirtualMIDISynth and Radeon driver

I suppose the Radeon driver is somehow "resetting" the registry key where UserMode MIDI devices (like VMS) register themselves to the system.

The keys are:

  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Drivers32
  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Drivers32

You should have a midi key with value VirtualMIDISynth.dll.

If you check before/next Radeo driver update you'll see the key is resetted (don't know why, anyway).

The quickest way to fix it is reinstall VirtualMIDISynth, blindly clicking on Next button in setup.

Your report gave me an idea: check driver registration at each VirtualMIDISynth start and ask the user to re-register it if missing.
This should avoid user to re-run the setup again...

Posts: 19
Joined: 16 Giu 2016 - 19:07
Re: VirtualMIDISynth and Radeon driver

AMD released a new driver (19.2.3), and as you predicted the midi registry key used by VMS (midi1 in my case) was reset to the default value wdmaud.drv.

A quick reinstall restored the VMS driver.

Posts: 1972
Joined: 25 Mar 2012 - 01:19
Re: VirtualMIDISynth and Radeon driver

Just released version 2.7.0.

It adds a new feature that will check driver installation at startup and allows the user to fix it if needed.

New version can be found here.

Posts: 11
Joined: 21 Feb 2019 - 23:34
Re: VirtualMIDISynth and Radeon driver

Just updated. Also updated with Radeon in order to test the new feature. Started VMS and it told me of the problem and asked to fix it and so I said yes. Great. BUT - when I started Encore it reported "Version mismatch between client (2.6.0) and server (2.7.0)" and now I have no sound from Encore.

Posts: 1972
Joined: 25 Mar 2012 - 01:19
Re: VirtualMIDISynth and Radeon driver

It seems something got wrong during 2.7.0 setup.

Could you please try to reinstall it and double check that no error message is shown?

Posts: 11
Joined: 21 Feb 2019 - 23:34
Re: VirtualMIDISynth and Radeon driver

Yep - that did the trick. Thanks. Weird. I wonder if it is somehow related to the sequence of - install Radeon, install new VMS - repair config.

Anyway, just a small thing about the installation process for you to consider. The box that appears to tell you about the running apps advises to right-click and then try to close. But when right-clicking all that happens is a window with one item and that is "copy list to clipboard". So that is not very helpful.