failed to open the audio devide focusrite usb asio

In Reaper alone I can drive hundreds of channels with hundreds of VST effects on low ASIO buffers and it is running extremely smoothly. I am testing this on a machine with the latest generation i7 CPU and usually I have more than enough CPU power for anything music-related.

It sounds like it can't sync to ASIO buffer no matter which buffer size, which leads me to believe it is some kind of a bug, rather than underwhelmed real-time CPU cycles. The bigger the buffer, the more apart in time crackling noise is. I tried all different combinations of buffers and the only difference it makes is how often the crackling is heard. But, as soon as I try to send my DAW's audio into Voicemeeter via Voicemeeter Virtual ASIO, that audio connection starts crackling and I can't fix it no matter what. On the other hand, when I set Voicemeeter to use ASIO exclusively, then, Voicemeeter alone is working just fine, no problems whatsoever, and ASIO buffer can go very low which provides good latency for music recording. No crackling, the sound is clean, all fine, except, the buffer is then at 1024 samples and that makes it lag too much to be usable in a music recording context. When I try to send DAW via ASIO to Voicemeeter and then set Voicemeeter to use MME mode of that card, then it is working correctly. The goal here is to have the smallest possible latency, for music studio recording purposes where low latency is paramount. What I want to do is to have my DAW (Reaper or Cubase) use Voicemeeter Virtual ASIO to talk to Voicemeeter AND at the same time, have Voicemeeter use my ASIO card for it's inputs and outputs. In other words, I could never ever make this setup work without audio crackling. Now, I have a specific use case where Voicemeeter (any) is failing me from day one.

Your work is inspiring new hope in the world of windows audio. First of all, thank you for your wonderful work on Voicemeeter series.

Failed to open the audio devide focusrite usb asio