ProjectSOAR

Fixes for the ASUS STRIX RAID PRO sound card on Windows 10 and 11, now that ASUS has dropped support for it.

I love how this card sounds, but two things broke and ASUS isn't fixing them anymore:

1. The volume dial on the control box stopped working, and the lights around it stopped following the volume.
2. After turning the PC on from cold, the card wouldn't show up in Windows sound settings until I rebooted again.

This repo fixes both. Nothing from ASUS is modified, and no ASUS files are included here. You still need the normal ASUS driver installed.

What was wrong

The dial: the only thing that reads the control box is an ASUS helper called nhAsusStrixSvc32.exe (part of Sonic Studio 1.1.23). On my machine it crashed about a minute after every logon, and once it's gone nothing listens to the box. The box itself was fine the whole time. SoarDial is a small service I wrote to take over that job.

Cold boot: the card has its own ASMedia ASM1142 USB controller, with the actual audio chip sitting behind it. On a cold start the audio device sometimes never shows up behind that controller. A reboot fixed it, and restarting just the controller fixes it too, which is what StrixBootFix does at startup.

Requirements

• STRIX RAID PRO with the ASUS driver installed. I tested with driver/Sonic Studio package 1.1.23 and control box firmware 1.14.
• Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit. I'm on Windows 10 22H2. Windows 11 should work too, since everything here only uses standard Windows features, but I haven't been able to test it yet.
• Admin rights to install.

You don't need to download anything else. The install script compiles SoarDial with the C# compiler that comes with Windows.

Install

Open PowerShell as administrator in this folder and run:

# the dial, buttons and lights
powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\src\SoarDial\Install-SoarDial.ps1

# the cold boot fix
powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\src\BootFix\Install-StrixBootFix.ps1

You can install just one of them if you only have one of the problems. To update, run the same script again.

To uninstall, add -Uninstall:

powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\src\SoarDial\Install-SoarDial.ps1 -Uninstall
powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\src\BootFix\Install-StrixBootFix.ps1 -Uninstall

SoarDial (the control box)

This installs a Windows service called SoarDial to C:\Program Files\SoarDial. It starts with Windows and gets restarted automatically if it ever crashes.

What the controls do:

• Turning the dial changes the STRIX volume, 2% per click.
• Pressing the dial mutes and unmutes.
• The RAID mode button isn't mapped to anything yet.
• The ring of 13 orange lights shows the current volume. It also updates when you change the volume somewhere else in Windows.
• The red lights on the sides come on while muted.

Some notes:

• It always controls the STRIX output, even if your default device in Windows is something else.
• If the card isn't there yet (like during a cold boot), it waits for it. If the card drops out, it reconnects.
• If the ASUS helper happens to be running, SoarDial stays out of the way until it closes, so one click never changes the volume twice.
• The log is in C:\ProgramData\SoarDial\SoarDial.log.

If you want to try it without installing anything, build it and run it in a terminal. If the service is installed, stop it first, since only one copy can run at a time.

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\csc.exe /nologo /target:exe /r:System.ServiceProcess.dll /out:SoarDial.exe .\src\SoarDial\SoarDial.cs
.\SoarDial.exe --console            # add --step 5 for 5% per click

StrixBootFix (cold boot)

This installs a scheduled task called StrixBootFix that runs as SYSTEM every time Windows starts:

1. It waits up to 25 seconds for the STRIX audio device (USB\VID_0B05&PID_180D). On a normal boot it shows up after about 12 seconds.
2. If it's still missing, it restarts the ASM1142 controller with pnputil /restart-device and gives it 12 seconds. It tries this up to 6 times.
3. It writes what happened on every boot to C:\ProgramData\StrixBootFix\boot.log.

On my PC the card came back on the second restart after a cold boot that would normally have needed a full reboot.

Tools

The scripts in tools/ are what I used to figure out how the control box talks. They might help if you have a different card or firmware.

• HidInspect.ps1 shows the box's HID interface (report sizes and usages).
• BoxListen.ps1 -Seconds 60 prints what the box sends while you turn the dial and press buttons.
• LedProbe.ps1 sends light commands to the box. Use -Data "0,255,31" for one command, or -Sweep / -Walk to step through patterns.

Stop the SoarDial service before using BoxListen.ps1 or LedProbe.ps1, otherwise they'll get in each other's way.

How the control box talks

The box shows up as HID interface MI_04 on USB device VID_0B05 PID_180D. Windows sees it as a consumer control device, but the reports are a custom ASUS format: 16 bytes plus a report ID byte, 17 in total. Windows doesn't understand them, which is why the dial needs software at all.

From the box

[0] report id (0)   [1] length   [2] checksum   [3] sequence   [4] command   [5] data length   [6..] data
checksum = sequence + command + data length + sum(data)

Things that tripped me up:

• Every event comes as two packets: a sync packet (length 1, byte 0xC5) and then the actual data packet.
• When nothing is happening, the box sends its last event again about every 963 ms. You can tell those repeats apart from real events because the content and timing are identical.
• Buttons send the event twice per press: once when you press and once when you let go.

Commands:

Command	Meaning	Data
0x01	key	0 RAID mode button, 1 dial press, 2 dial long press, 3 dial up, 4 dial down
0x02	host state
0x03	ack (comes back after each light command)
0x05	box status
0x06	box version	major, minor
0x07	headphones	1 plugged in, 2 unplugged
0x08	mic

To the box (lights)

[0] 0   [1] 9   [2] 0xC5   [3] checksum   [4] sequence (0)   [5] 0x04   [6] 3   [7] status   [8..9] ring
checksum = sequence + 0x04 + 3 + status + ring low byte + ring high byte

• status bits: 0 red left, 1 white left, 2 red right, 3 white right, 4 RAID mode light.
• ring is a 16-bit little-endian bitmask. Bits 0 to 12 are the 13 orange lights around the dial, starting from the left.

Sending command 0x06 with one data byte (0x01) asks the box for its firmware version.

Known limits

• I've only tested this on my own PC: STRIX RAID PRO, box firmware 1.14, Windows 10 22H2.
• Windows 11 is untested. The scripts and SoarDial should run fine there. The bigger question is the ASUS driver itself, which dates from 2016. New Windows 11 installs often have Memory Integrity turned on, and that can block older drivers. Getting the ASUS driver installed is outside what this repo fixes.
• SoarDial doesn't actually depend on the ASUS software. It just looks for an audio output with "STRIX" in the name, so the dial should still work if the card ends up on Windows' generic USB audio driver instead. I haven't tried that either.
• If you're on Windows 11, please open an issue and say whether it worked, either way.
• The ASUS software also looks for PID_180C, which I think is the STRIX RAID DLX. SoarDial will try to use it, but I haven't tested it and the lights might be laid out differently. If you have one, let me know how it goes.
• The boot fix only helps when the controller is there but the audio device behind it isn't. If the controller itself is missing, that's a hardware or PCIe problem and this can't fix it. The boot log will tell you which one it is.

If something doesn't work, open an issue and attach C:\ProgramData\SoarDial\SoarDial.log and/or C:\ProgramData\StrixBootFix\boot.log.

Disclaimer

This isn't an official ASUS project and isn't affiliated with ASUS in any way. I worked out the control box protocol so the hardware would keep working, and no ASUS code or files are included. Use at your own risk.