Anyone have an idea as to why this would have started happening for me a couple days ago? The sound will just randomly cut out until a louder sound happens and then it snaps back. I thought that maybe it was my headset that I was using, but after trying another one it's definitely not the cause. Nothing has changed in the last few days besides a windows update, but I can't imagine that would be causing this. I'm not the only one having this issue, either. Ani is also experiencing the same thing and from what he's said it's been going on for longer than mine has been. So yeah...any ideas on this? I've searched the net and found nothing that seems to help.
Sounds like issues that were common as analog mixing consoles got old. We called it "surging the system". The audio would start to get quieter and quieter over the course of 5 minutes or so at an exponentially increasing rate until it finally just dropped off completely. Then we would crank up the volume faders and after a couple seconds a massive volume surge goes through and then sound returns to normal. It was always a hardware issue in mixing consoles and it usually meant the traces and various components inside had to be cleaned. And yes, I know that is a disgusting solution to the problem, but unfortunately it wasnt always up to me for when hardware gets repaired or replaced and that solution is considered "good enough" at many places until the board dies completely. I have never heard of the problem in a computer though. Still, I suspect that it is a hardware issue from how it sounds. Louder audio draws more power which will pull it past a hardware area that has too much resistance, or a capacitor needing to be charged up more. You could try getting a new sound card. Perhaps the best way to test that is to buy a sucky little $10 USB audio adapter and use that for a couple weeks and see if the problem is gone. If it is, then the issue is with your older audio hardware.
Well...it really shouldn't be an issue with my hardware...Kinetic and I just built this PC from the ground up (all brand new parts) back in February. I'll try blowing out the inside of the case and such and see if that helps first.
Could be how some software is interacting with your hardware. When I play Endless Space my sound will be working fine for hours and then all of a sudden over about 2-3 seconds it just fades out and then is gone. Power cycling my DAC doesnt fix the problem, I simply have to restart my game and it is fine again for 15-20 minutes. It has never done this in any other game I have played before. So strange things are possible.
Another thing to note is Ani is using Windows 8 and I'm on 7. So not sure if that would point towards a specific problem. We're both running PCs that are a month or two old.
Also tried a system restore to back before the issue started in case it had to do with an update that took place and it's still doing the same thing.
A problem like that could very well be in the analog circuitry. What are you using for sound anyway? Motherboard, soundcard, external DAC? The other thing, IIRC, is that win 7 has an issue where it think you're taking a skype call or something and mute/reduce the rest of your volume for it. In the sound control panel there's a "Communications" tab. Tell it to not reduce volume.
I'm using the onboard sound for the ASrock Z97 Extreme6 mobo. Pretty sure I checked that setting and it's off but I'll check again.
Any other possible ideas for this? I've exhausted everything I can find on the subject short of pulling the board out and RMAing it.
Ok, so apparently I'm retarded when it comes to manipulating my settings, had KM help me and turns out it's most definitely the onboard sound. Cheapo sound card fixed the issue...so that leads to the question of: Is there a good sound card that won't break the bank but still provide quality sound? This one sounds a bit...grainy? for lack of a better word. Didn't expect much for $20.
You should decide if you want a sound card, or a DAC. Both are the same thing, but a sound card is in the PCI-E form factor and goes into your motherboard. An external model is what is referred to as a DAC even though both solutions do the same thing. Difference being that usually the external solutions sound better, since they are geared towards just providing quality sound and they are away from the EMI being dumped out by other computer parts. Drawbacks are, no microphone input so you would use it for headphones or speakers but still use your onboard audio just for the mic in. They also rarely have any special processing for things like Dolby, but instead are just stereo PCM. Here is a good sound card to get: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102048 Or for a DAC you could look at things like these: http://www.amazon.com/FiiO-E10K-Hea..._2?ie=UTF8&qid=1426802725&sr=8-2&keywords=DAC http://www.audio-gd.com/Pro/Headphoneamp/NFB1532/NFB15.32EN.htm And there are TONS of DAC options available, and they get better and better the more you want to spend.
DAC or decent sound card, either is going to serve you pretty well. The Asus Xonar DX ($70) or DSX ($50) are both pretty no-frills and offer good sound quality. The Sound Blaster has perks in that microphone and (pretty meh) headphone amp. Sound card tech doesn't change much over the years. My 6-7 year old PCI-express X-fi is 99% of something new in terms of actual playback quality. If you're looking for an external DAC I'd give the Schiit Modi 2 a try. I've got a headphone amp from them recently and it's really impressed me at the price. It's also nice that their amp is a separate box from the DAC so you can mix/match things or go w/o the amp if you run speakers. What do you do for speakers/headphones? If you use a decent set of cans I would pick up a decent headphone amp to go with whichever soundcard/DAC option you go with.
Do those let you simply plug it in with USB? (It's not clear to me from the specs I've looked up) If so you don't really need a sound card at all. Otherwise you can easily get away with just the sound card. Especially for gaming purposes. The PX22s have 32ohm impedance so they're easy to drive. If you want to substantially upgrade there are a whole host of options, though. If you want to start down the rabbit hole $100 buys you very decent headphones....
They have a USB and a standard audio cable, both need to be plugged in for the headset and mic to both work.
I was able to find this on them: Console Audio Connection: RCA (analog) - PC/Mac Audio Connection: USB or stereo 3.5mm - Xbox 360 Mic Connection: 2.5mm chat cable - PC/PS3 Mic Connection: USB - Power: USB Im not sure how it all works if the mic MUST go through USB, but the headphones can be USB or 1/8". Tyrial says both have to be plugged in to work so that to me says he is using headphones over the 1/8" and mic over the USB. But it looks like both can run over the same USB connection from that little box (which btw Tyrial is a cheap DAC and ADC unit). So that should solve the audio dropout issues because using the USB device entirely means it would bypass the whole motherboard's onboard sound.
That's what I was thinking too. Just plug the headphone jack into the USB thingy and make sure you've got the outputs set right in windows and you should be off and running. That might sound better than the current sound card. If you still find it lacking I'd personally go with the Xonar DSX for an internal card