Olof
I’m not sure why you are concerned about the audio driver. In my mind that has nothing to do with the media control. The audio device/driver streams the audio signal, not shuttle commands. Personally this I think is a bug in windows itself, just like the dictation function that continually fails after five or six uses. To restart dictation you must go and kill the hidden process, then restart dictation, and you better be using a microphone that has a lot of gain. Camera mics don’t cut it.
I can see why you would want to use the shuttle functions of the multimedia key controller to operate your play pause functions within SD3. However it just does not work. And just like the disappearing record function when tracker is minimized. Click once and it works, second time no work regardless of mouse or keyboard input. But this only happens if the tractor is minimized. No issues with record if you open up that box.
My ex was a professional visual C++ programmer. So I am a little bit familiar.

Scott
PREVIOUS ; PLAY/PAUSE ; NEXT , stop, volume, mute.
I have 3 controls, 1 that is built into my keyboard and two USB units.
I do a fair bit of practice by playing along with videos from YouTube. It is nice to have a media controller right beside my drum kit. Also the one on my desk saves me from reaching over my keyboard to operate multimedia.

All
This behavior is random. It will happen within 3 seconds or it will happen after three days. And as I said before it appears to be random because I will be playing along with a video and then go to the interface to change a something, then back to playing, and I may or may not have control of my multimedia.
Yesterday it happened every time superior drummer had focus. Today I cannot get it to do it. No reboots no restarts nothing. No starting new programs etc. No quitting programs. Alt-tab that’s it.

Everyone thank you so much for your help.