Question Troubleshooting Audio Initialization Delay

[lamoraa]

If I pause any sound playing from my speakers for more than a few seconds, there is a delay of about 5 seconds between when I resume the sound and when the sound actually starts playing. The sound does not lag 5 seconds behind, I just miss whatever was played within that 5 second window for the speakers to initialize.
I have a Logitech Z906 sound system connected via SPDIF to a Sound Blaster X4, which is then connected via USB-C to my PC.
It seems that the Z906 goes into some sort of "standby" mode if no sound is detected for a few seconds. I do not believe that there is any way of disabling this "feature" on the Z906, and am wondering if maybe there is something I can do on the X4 side.

This was not an issue when I used to have the Z906 system connected to my PC via an internal sound blaster x ae-5. I built a new itx pc and do not have the extra pcie slot required for the x ae-5 anymore, hence why I am not using the X4 to decode to the Z906.

This is a real issue for trying to follow along with any video courses where I will often pause, try something, then resume the video.

Any help is greatly appreciated

 

[Ralston18]

Take a look in Task Manager (Startup tab) and in Task Scheduler.

Could some other app running in the background via Startup) or triggered via Task Scheduler attempting to run and perform some function (backup, update, "phone home", etc..)

If you do not discover anything by doing that then there are other tools to use.

Reliability History, Performance Monitor, and Process Explorer (Microsoft, free).

Use each tool (one tool at a time) to observe system performance while playing sound. Leave the tool window open and watch for what changes when you: 1) pause sound and, 2) resume sound.

May take a bit of trial and error to figure how a method that works for you.

End objective being to discover what is or is not happening during the post resume lag.

 

[lamoraa]

I'm not exactly sure what I would be looking for. I have very few apps that run on startup.
No activity seems to correlate to pausing / playing sounds on task manager or process explorer.
I don't even see any change in activity for the creative app.
The lag is certainly not caused by any system lag, it seems to be coming from the initialization of Z906 control console itself.

I have noticed the following:
-If sound is paused for < 20 seconds, the sound will resume immediately when played again.
-If sound is paused for > 20 seconds, the decode light on the console goes off, and there will be a delay in resuming sound.
-The delay is roughly 3.5 seconds, and in that time
A. The decode light and the speaker indicator lights come on.
B. The speaker indicator lights go off again
C. The speaker indicator lights come back on
D. sound is resumed

 

[lamoraa]

I am now using Sound Keeper to prevent the Z906 from going into standby / sleep mode.
(https://veg.by/en/projects/soundkeeper/)
Holding the "level" button on the Z906 remote for 5 seconds is supposed to disable the standby mode, and the lights indicate that it took the command, however that did not work.
FYI, there is nothing in the Z906 manual that mentions standby or the ability to disable it. I found that information on another forum. The Z906 has a horrible manual.