nvidia HD audio driver issues

Discussion in 'Videocards - NVIDIA GeForce Drivers Section' started by krutow, Feb 13, 2022.

  1. krutow

    krutow Guest

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    So I have been plagued by various nvidia HD audio driver issues (silent stream bug, intermittently no sound, sound setup reverting from 5.1 to stereo, etc.), with audio being output to hdmi together with video. Each workaround seems to fix something but either not fix everything or add another problem.

    Notably, I applied the registry edit to disable idle power state which seems to have fixed the issue of 5.1 reverting to stereo:
    https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforc...-bug-hdmi-reverting-to-stereo-since-/2019857/

    But now it can happen that when starting a movie, no sound is output via HDMI at all. To solve this, I have to stop and restart the application running the movie (be it media player, VLC, a browser, it occurs with various applications...) - it happens randomly, maybe one out of 20 times I start a movie? And it is not a problem of starting the movie after the computer has been idle for a while. Could this be a side effect of the registry edit? Otherwise, is there a way to find out what is happening?

    Most solutions found on the web being quite old, I wanted to know if there is now an ultimate solution or a known driver version which solves all known nvidia HD audio problems?

    It is a Windows 10 computer, Geforce 1070, no overclocking, nothing fancy.

    Any help would be much appreciated...
     
  2. Mapson

    Mapson Member Guru

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    Another registry key that may help is PnPCapabilities under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4d36e96c-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\YOUR-NIVIDIA-DEVICE-INDEX.

    Creating the key and setting it to a value of 18 Hexadecimal ( 24 decimal ) may help with audio dropouts on the interface as it also stops Windows from turning off the device for powersaving reasons i.e "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power".

    Example for GPU with device at 0001:
    Code:
    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4d36e96c-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0001]
    "PnPCapabilities"=dword:00000018
    Reboot after setting the registry key.

    IIRC, there was a bug a while back where ConservationIdleTime, IdlePowerState and PerformanceIdleTime were being ignored or erratic, PnPCapabilities was a workaround.

    Nvidia has an open bug for Ampere GPUs but you have Pascal.

    EDIT: Microsoft official documentation, example is NIC but PnPCapabilities applies to other devices - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/tr...etworking/power-management-on-network-adapter and related Techpowerup post - https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...io-drivers-timeout-values.260363/post-4564630
     
    Last edited: Feb 13, 2022
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  3. Astyanax

    Astyanax Ancient Guru

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    you can disable the top level HD Audio endpoint to toggle this setting without restarting.
     
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  4. krutow

    krutow Guest

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    thank you, I will try this!

    two other things that seem to be suggested frequently: uninstall all Nvidia drivers completely with DDU and reinstall the nvidia video driver only, not the audio one. Then let Windows install a Microsoft HD audio driver. The other one would be to use the soundkeeper utility. Any thoughts on those solutions would be much appreciated.

    The box in question is not a gaming one, it is use by a small volunteer-run community theater to screen movies in some kind of htpc setup if you will. So it's crucial sound is being output when the movie starts :)
     

  5. krutow

    krutow Guest

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    one more question: is there a way to monitor / check what is happening with the audio? i.e. see if the device is in power save or if the issue lies somewhere else?
     
  6. SeeNoWeevil

    SeeNoWeevil Member

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    This is annoying the hell outta me. I have several problems (similar to the OP);

    1. Audio stream seems to cease when there's no audio actively playing causing there to be a pop and part of the next sound being cut off (I can see my AVR changing from Atmos to Stereo, I think this just means there's no stream at all). This is most noticable during the Windows sound test as it moves from speaker to speaker.

    2. Frequent audio dropouts in games when using Atmos. This ranges from every few seconds, but with most games it's every 5mins or so. Doesn't happen when Atmos is off.

    3. No sound at all. Causing a HDMI re-sync at the display seems to solve this. This issue seems to be much rarer now though.

    I've tried every reg edit I've found with no joy. This is with the current driver, Win 11 and a 3080 connected to a 4K120Hz TV with audio via e-ARC to my AVR.
     
  7. Astyanax

    Astyanax Ancient Guru

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    nobody can fix the atmos drops because its an ARC specification flaw.

    output directly to the atmos device instead of forwarding it.
     
  8. SeeNoWeevil

    SeeNoWeevil Member

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    What makes you think this, source?

    Nvidia have it listed as a known issue plus it only happens with full screen material. Engage the windows mixer (i.e borderless window mode OR even just bringing up the Xbox overlay) fixes it.

    Going direct to the AVR is not an option
     
  9. Astyanax

    Astyanax Ancient Guru

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    eARC uses the RTP spec
    the drop occurs when a 16bit sequence buffer or 32bit extended sequence buffer rolls over to 0,

    https://flylib.com/books/en/4.245.1.33/1/
     
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  10. Sajittarius

    Sajittarius Master Guru

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    i have found CRU (Custom Res Utility) helped me, because i was able to set the device to be 8 ch only (removed 2ch from the config). Astyanax is right, and depending on the device if it loses the connection briefly and reconnects, it may default to a different setting.

    For me it kept switching from 5.1ch back to 2ch because that was the default. Once i forced it to use 5.1, problem went away.

    For reference i am using win11 + RTX3090 connected to LG C9 and passing to Pioneer VSX503 via eARC. It was a massive pain to set up, but its stable now (literally only LPCM works properly, all the bitstream formats have major issues with the pass through).

    screenshot from CRU:
    https://imgur.com/a/cq6tVbp
     

  11. adolfotregosa

    adolfotregosa Active Member

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  12. SeeNoWeevil

    SeeNoWeevil Member

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    How can that be the case though when borderless window (or bringing up the Xbox overlay) solves the problem? I don't have sound dropouts for example watching a youtube video in chrome, only fullscreen games. My assumption is, when using borderless, Windows is handling the audio mixing, whereas fullscreen games are purely the nvidia driver (and nvidia are doing something wrong). Why also are Nvidia tracking it as a bug?

    • [NVIDIA Ampere GPU]: With the GPU connected to an HDMI 2.1 audio/video receiver, audio may drop out when playing back Dolby Atmos. [3345965]
     
  13. SeeNoWeevil

    SeeNoWeevil Member

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    I should probably clarify, what I mean is, the setting in Windows doesn't revert from Atmos to Stereo, my AVR shows Stereo any time there is not any sound actively playing. I believe this is because it's not receiving a stream at all due to the audio device going to sleep. This doesn't sound like a problem but every time it 'wakes up' there's a small pop during the switch and the first half a second or so of the sound is cut off. If I play the sound test in Windows, I only hear half of each sound as it moves around speakers because the device is going to sleep/waking on each sound played. You can supposedly turn this off with reg edits but none of them seem to work anymore. Once a sound is playing, it stays sending Atmos.

    I can't use PCM because Samsung think e-ARC doesn't need to pass PCM, only Atmos.
     
    Last edited: Jun 29, 2022
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  14. tunejunky

    tunejunky Ancient Guru

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    Win 11 or Win 10?
    i upgraded to win 11 instead of a clean install (which i normally do) on my laptop (i use separate monitor) and i had no end of problems with sound from December 2021 to April 2022. there were Two separate issues intertwining, one from Nvidia bad drivers from last winter (since fixed in updates) and another in Win 11 as the combination didn't play nice with receivers or DACs. Win 11 didn't like the firmware.
    if you also transitioned in this time, please check (Samsung and the receiver) for firmware updates for Win 11.
     
  15. Astyanax

    Astyanax Ancient Guru

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  16. SeeNoWeevil

    SeeNoWeevil Member

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  17. SeeNoWeevil

    SeeNoWeevil Member

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    Clean install of Win11. Display and AVR on latest firmware. Honestly, running a high-end Nvidia PC using HDMI 2.1, an e-ARC AVR and a TV, all on a new OS has been a nightmare. So many bugs/oddities. I've had numerous video and audio issues and they're really difficult to debug as it could be any of Microsoft, Nvidia, Samsung or Denon. Hell, throw in Dolby for the Dolby app and the HDMI org while we're at it.
     
  18. tsunami231

    tsunami231 Ancient Guru

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    I never been able to get anything but stereo out Hdmi from GPU no matter how i set thing up. HDMI audio on PC side thing is nightmare imo
     
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  19. Astyanax

    Astyanax Ancient Guru

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    o_O
    your amp must have a setting that is set to tv+amp instead of just amp.
     
  20. tsunami231

    tsunami231 Ancient Guru

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    yah if the tv arc have no issue sending DD/DTS from all there other device connected to it to AVR and the AVR play back DD/DTS find from those using TV's arc out, EXCEPT the PC the problem was not the TV/AVR ACR/settings. the issue is windows imo or somesetting on it, I will keep using Optical I dont have worry about stupid issue be cuase my hdmi refusing to send anything but stereo.

    Either way I have no intrest in troubleshoot the issue When i can just ignore and optical out and set that to DD/DDL/DTS and not have to worry about only stereo being out put
     

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