Question

You were correct that my DAW (Reaper) is able to bypass the windows audio subsystem entirely and use the interface directly. I just wanted to clarify in case anyone has a similar issue how I fixed it. By default, Reaper, and perhaps others, use sound system that works off the windows one, like this:

The fix is to simply switch to the ASIO system, like this:

Why on earth it wouldn't DEFAULT to this is a mystery to me. Anyway, thanks for the help! I wouldn't have figured it out otherwise!

Answer 1

It's a system preference in the software and Windows apps will always default to Windows audio because its native to Windows.

OSX on Mac computers do to same with "built in" audio.

It's annoying yes, but its always been this way.