Question Really strange audio bug

[PatientGamer]

I am dealing with a really strange audio issue that I believe is OS or driver related. I am running W11 Pro.

Listening to music or watching videos the sound occasionally just cuts out. The mouse seems to get a bit choppy as if the PC is going to crash. However, here is the really odd part. Clicking on spatial sound and changing "Windows Sonic for Headphones" either on or off depending on its current setting immediately resolves the issue. So if spatial sound is off, changing it to on fixes the issue, if its on turning it off does the same...

I have checked this with onboard audio (Realtek) and using my standard audio setup which is a Scarlett 2i2. This only seems to happen when watching videos or listening to music in the edge browser or Spotify app and not during gaming. How would you go about troubleshooting this issue? Or better yet, has anyone heard of this specific issue before?

I have disabled all other audio devices except the Scarlett and the issue is still occurring.

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

How would you go about troubleshooting this issue?

make sure you have the latest related motherboard drivers and BIOS installed.

if using any sort of control software for audio beyond the initial drivers; uninstall it.

 

[PatientGamer]

make sure you have the latest related motherboard drivers and BIOS installed.

if using any sort of control software for audio beyond the initial drivers; uninstall it.

Everything is up to date. Its a fresh W11 install as I just installed a new 2tb SSD pretty recently. BIOS is latest and all drivers are latest installed from manufacturers websites rather than the old stuff on the ASUS Mobo support page such as chipset and gpu drivers. I did use the Realtek driver from Asus, but Windows says it's the latest... I went ahead and uninstalled the Realtek driver completely since I don't actually need it. All of my audio I/O is through the Scarlett 2i2.

I found 2 more AMD audio devices in the device manager that are probably related to sound output from the GPU. I disabled those right after making the OP and haven't had any cut outs. Fingers crossed.

 

[PatientGamer]

I believe I have isolated the issue to opening or switching tabs in edge... I turned off hardware acceleration and no change. Wow this is annoying.

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

I believe I have isolated the issue to opening or switching tabs in edge

if the issue doesn't continue when using a different browser then it is likely just bad software.

 

[PatientGamer]

I think this is resolved. I cleared all audio drivers completely and restarted the pc and allowed the onboard audio to just use the windows driver. I then reinstalled the Focusrite drivers for the Scarlett 2i2. I don't know if the onboard audio is actually working properly because I wont use it. I guess something with those Realtek drivers was causing something to bug out. It will remain a mystery but at least I fixed it without pulling my hair out.

 

[dwd999]

I think this is resolved. I cleared all audio drivers completely and restarted the pc and allowed the onboard audio to just use the windows driver. I then reinstalled the Focusrite drivers for the Scarlett 2i2. I don't know if the onboard audio is actually working properly because I wont use it. I guess something with those Realtek drivers was causing something to bug out. It will remain a mystery but at least I fixed it without pulling my hair out.

If you're using the Scarlett it probably might be better if you turned off the internal audio in the computer's BIOS.

 

[CmdrShepard]

I am dealing with a really strange audio issue that I believe is OS or driver related. I am running W11 Pro.

Listening to music or watching videos the sound occasionally just cuts out. The mouse seems to get a bit choppy as if the PC is going to crash. However, here is the really odd part. Clicking on spatial sound and changing "Windows Sonic for Headphones" either on or off depending on its current setting immediately resolves the issue. So if spatial sound is off, changing it to on fixes the issue, if its on turning it off does the same...

I have checked this with onboard audio (Realtek) and using my standard audio setup which is a Scarlett 2i2. This only seems to happen when watching videos or listening to music in the edge browser or Spotify app and not during gaming. How would you go about troubleshooting this issue? Or better yet, has anyone heard of this specific issue before?

I have disabled all other audio devices except the Scarlett and the issue is still occurring.

I see you are mentioning Scarlett so as an owner of 8i6 3rd gen let me tell you this.

If you updated to their latest Focusrite Control 3.17.0 recently do yourself a favor and reinstall the older Focusrite Control (3.11.0.1983).

I am using driver 4.102.4.735 which came with 3.11.0, and that's the last one that works OK for me. I had a long email discussion with their support about audio cutting out and audio corruption (garbled sound) and basically all they were able to suggest is to disable exclusive mode for audio applications in audio settings.

Even if that might help that's of course a horrible advice because WASAPI exclusive mode is the only way older games can get low latency audio playback to work.