Thread Scarlett 2i2 Woes

'Hi all, My first post. Hope you're all well. I've posted about an issue I'm experiencing with the 2i2 on my DAW's forum, and have written Focusrite as well. I saw some old threads citing similar problems. The 2i2 worked flawlessly with my Acoustica Mixcraft DAW on the older 64-bit Windows 10 machine. I installed everything on a new i9 Dell about a month ago and have had audio peskiness ever since. Whether it's the Focusrite, the cable, the USB hubs, the PC, I can't say yet.

Windows is losing connection to the audio interface. Very intermittantly, upon playback in the DAW, the audio will garble for a second or two, before it drops out. I've realized it's not the DAW per se, because from that point, Windows itself sometimes has no audio. At times, just reloading the project in the DAW will right it, other times I need to pull the USB plug and reinsert to reestablish audio in a general sense.

It's odd because I've made sure to optimize the new PC per Sweetwater's excellent recommendations. The computer is not sleeping at all, nor are any of the USB ports. All power management for the USB ports is disabled, I've unchecked 'Allow devices to have exclusive control...' too. I've even gone so far as to disable all the other audio devices to avoid confusion, and there are several! So, during that test the 2i2 was all that was available to Windows but I still experienced the very intermittent stutters. Sometimes, merely walking away for a while, the connection breaks. I've moved to another USB port and will observe that. I've also tried plugged directly in to USB, and also into an AC-powered hub.

The only thing I notice different is that the UI of the Scarlett's driver is different than what was on the old machine. The former was black with red, and the current one I installed from Focusrite is a generic light-gray. I'll wait to see what they say about perhaps trying a rolled-back version. Focusrite says to stick with USB 2.0 and that's what I've done. I saw a couple of articles that stated that USB 3.0 should offer no advantage and that it could actually be tricker depending on what the manufacturer's policy is on 2.0 devices plugged in 3.0 ports.

One wrench I'll throw into the works- a couple of times a day, the Dell seems to freeze up from 1-5 seconds, separate and apart from anything audio related. The cursor will freeze. I've even seen the video wink out once. I watch the Task Manager for any clues and have uninstalled some unnecessary things and try to keep installed programs minimal. Of course the Task Manager reveals that there are myriad things always running in the background. So, there could be an underlying cause. The PC and most peripherals are on a UPS so that would alert me to power interruptions or significant dips.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and for offering any thoughts you might have!'