Sound Fades In and Out
I recently rebuilt my HTPC using this board running Windows 10 Pro and have it connected to my sound bar using an optical cable. In the past couple of months the sound has been fading in and out quite badly, but quite inconsistently. It's best with Plex and worst with Netflix, Spotify, and HBOGo.
There's nothing installed on the box except for Chrome, VLC, Spotify, some NZB downloading and cataloging programs, and Plex. I've tried installing updated sound drivers but the latest seems to be from 10/2015.
Any ideas?
0
Comments
So fading out means it gets quieter and louder in the same app during a single show, or different apps have different noise levels?
Is the cable known to be good?
I don't know much about these things but I'd be suspicious of the cat.
Have you tried alternative connections for sound, like though the HDMI cable? What about connecting some headphones directly to the HTPC?
The former. I had to change the volume for Game of Thrones so many times I actually stopped watching.
Not a clue, actually. Is optical not an on/off thing? I was thinking if it was damaged it just wouldnt work at all.
I have not.
Are people thinking a hardware issue as opposed to a software one?
I don't know about the others, but I like to rule out simple things first.
Optical is digital/binary, sure, but a shoddy cable can drop ones and zeroes or transpose them. Can happen to any digital cable. See it all the time on monitors with high-frequency cabling. Things generally work okay, but sometimes it just cuts out or gets corrupted.
Maybe there's a normalization setting. Sometimes that will cause the fading problem. Normalization should be off.
Make sure windows isn't ducking the sound when it thinks a mic may be enabled. Ducking is the automatic lowering of source volume when a secondary source is used (example: your game volume lowers when someone talks in mumble)
Make sure your TV and sound bar do not have a "night mode" enabled. This is automatically adjust the volume when a certain scene gets loud in a show. I don't think that's the issue but worth a check.
Other than that I have no clue.
Here's what I've tried tonight:
Still having the issue. So I guess that leaves soundbar or mobo itself? Is there any place that realtek would put new drivers that I didn't find?
Tomorrow I'll try hooking my laptop to the soundbar to see if that makes a difference.
Outcome? Any luck?
Today I tried running the sound through the HDMI cable and TV itself, bypassing the soundbar. The sound was fine this way. I also noticed today that there was a "reset" option for the soundbar and said "what the hell" and tried it. This fixed the issue. Welp. Guess I'll just reset if it ever happens again.
Simplest solution is best solution.
I knew it.