Audio cutting out after a few seconds

[clement.nerma]

Hi there!

I'm encoutering a really weird bug since yesterday.

Basically, I have my PC plugged in to an AVR which itself is plugged into my TV.

When playing games through Steam, audio cuts after a few seconds. Steam's Big Picture UI audio *itself* cuts out after a few seconds. Also happens in any game I launch through Steam.

When that happens, Windows is not able to play sound through the device any more. Playing a Youtube video results in no sound. I see Windows is sending sound as the sound control panel indicates there is but nothing reaches my AVR.

I tried plugging my PC directly into my TV and the TV into the AVR through eARC, same problem happens.

When I close Steam games, sound tends to comes back. I tried changing my sound settings from Surround to Stereo, no success. Also tried Dolby Access app from the Microsoft Store, no improvement either.

This only happens with Steam, if I play non-Steam games there is no problem. The selected output device doesn't change, it's always my AVR. The problem also doesn't happen when the output device is my headphones instead of my AVR.

I tried uninstalling and re-installing Steam, updating Nvidia drivers, etc. but nothing changed.

Does anyone know how to solve this problem? It's really driving me insane.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[Iceira]

Thats your pc that has resources issue and struggle with performance, way to many issue can cause this, you can start with system spec

Thats steam system information, copy/paste that here.


also do them cmd ( google them how to do )

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /Restorehealth
SFC /Scannow

this might not help, but try see it as ruleout other system issue.

even check disk on evey hard drev, as i said you dont want things discover later with the system.

[clement.nerma]

It's not a problem with performance, I have a Ryzen 9 7900 and an RTX 2060 Super, 64 GB of RAM, and I'm currently playing indie 2D titles.

Also the problem only appeared yesterday, those same titles played fine before.

Also, non-Steam games don't have this issue, even when playing more demanding ones.

[Marble]

If it's an issue that just started happening, it might be worth running System Restore and going back to a point before it happened and see if that resolves it.

Steam doesn't do anything with audio, so the fault would be with something else.
Check the audio driver control panel app (if there is one) to make sure stuff like virtual surround, DTS-X and all that sort of stuff is disabled. Make sure format is set to PCM at a frequency your AVR supports, disable any enhancements that might be on by default, unplug/disable headset in case it's trying to switch to that automatically for some reason.

[clement.nerma]

Steam is definitely doing something with audio, because as I said the problem only happens with Steam.

I already disabled all "improvement effects" in the control panel, tried to both enable and disable Dolby Access, music plays perfectly well outside of Steam (games too), and the AVR indicates it's receiving a multi-channel input, which means a PCM signal. Also tried setting it to stereo, nothing changed.

I tried to set it to 24 bit / 196 kHz, which works fine (but the Steam problem still happens), went back to 16 bit / 48 kHz, same thing.

The output device is not being switched, I already checked that. Nor is it being disconnected.

[clement.nerma]

Ok I take back what I said, the audio problem seems to happen *sometimes* with other applications, it just takes longer (a few minutes).

[Marble]

Is it an Nvidia 30 series GPU? These are notoriously flaky with HDMI audio.

[clement.nerma]

No as I indicated in a previous comment it's a RTX 2060 Super
Also never had this problem before, been using the GPU for 3 years and no issue so far

[Marble]

If it were me then, I'd go system restore, and if that didn't work I'd reinstall Windows.
Knowing that this specific setup works, it'd be less time consuming to start fresh and install all the drivers again than it would be to fumble around trying to find a solution with no clues to go on.

[clement.nerma]

Ok so I did a few more tests.

This bug only happens when the AVR or the TV is selected as the audio output.

I'm currently playing a Steam game on the TV but with a speaker connected to the case's Jack 3.5mm port and it works like a charm.

I have absolutely no idea where to search from this...

[clement.nerma]

Originally posted by Marble:

If it were me then, I'd go system restore, and if that didn't work I'd reinstall Windows.
Knowing that this specific setup works, it'd be less time consuming to start fresh and install all the drivers again than it would be to fumble around trying to find a solution with no clues to go on.

I did reinstall Windows 3 weeks ago, and I don't have a lot of programs installed, so nothing guarantees that it would work properly after reinstalling :(

[Marble]

Originally posted by clement.nerma:

Ok so I did a few more tests.

This bug only happens when the AVR or the TV is selected as the audio output.

I'm currently playing a Steam game on the TV but with a speaker connected to the case's Jack 3.5mm port and it works like a charm.

I have absolutely no idea where to search from this...

Possibly the cable? Maybe the resolution, refresh rate, color depth and/or format are incompatible?

I had an receiver once that technically supported 192khz with a 1080p signal but actually didn't unless I turned off PLII.

Have you tried using the TV speakers with HDMI and taking the receiver totally out of the equation?

[clement.nerma]

It's not a cable problem since again it worked perfectly until very recently. I checked resolution, HDR, refresh rate, everything's fine. Also I'm using an HDMI 2.1 cable.

I can't test the speakers without the receiver as these are passive speakers, they require 6-channel amplification to work.

When using any other device than my PC, sound plays perfectly fine.

I just made a little hack in which I disable the AVR's sound output in Windows, plug in a USB to Optical converter I bought a few years ago, and plug the optical into the AVR's inputs. Not great, and it only supports stereo, but it works. So that'll do until I figure out what's the problem with this system.

[Marble]

Originally posted by clement.nerma:

I can't test the speakers without the receiver as these are passive speakers, they require 6-channel amplification to work.

Does your TV not have built-in speakers?
The idea is to run HDMI audio directly to your TV and then output via the TV speakers, not the surround speakers. This tests whether the issue is with the the PC or the receiver.
If removing the AVR and surround speakers entirely still gets you the same issue when just using the built-in TV speakers, then you know it's a problem with the PC. If it works fine, then it's an issue with the receiver, or an issue in some part of the connection between receiver and TV.

[clement.nerma]

Oh I see! Sorry I misunderstood what you meant.
I'll try that when I get back and tell you how it went.

[clement.nerma]

Ok so I did the test and it cuts out even when displaying on the TV, even if the AVR isn't connected.

So it would be related to the display adapter? I really don't get what's happening here...