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[fitbrit]

A number of people have been in touch with me to say that there is no music coming out of their computers. In each case (three so far this week, and a suspected fourth and fifth case to be determined) the problem has been that the audio device associated with their default zone has changed.

For example: Zone 1 is SPDIF/BNC, but it gets changed to HDMI.

This seems to be happening after waking the computer from sleep, and may or may not have anything to do with a recent Windows 10 update. Anyone else seeing this behaviour?

[jmone]

I've seen my Audio Device being changed to MC WDM Driver alot over the last month.  I figured it was happening after installing a updated MC.

[fitbrit]

I think that would be in the Windows default device, right?
I was referring to the audio device assigned to a certain zone in Options>Audio.

Seems like a coincidence that 4 people called me this week to say they weren't getting sound out from their MC. Fortunately, they thought I was an MC deity when I had it fixed in under a minute. It's happened to one guy twice.
I wonder if it could be triggered by a sleep state in either the PC or their DAC if they leave it on and do not play audio through it?

[mwillems]

I think that would be in the Windows default device, right?
I was referring to the audio device assigned to a certain zone in Options>Audio.

Seems like a coincidence that 4 people called me this week to say they weren't getting sound out from their MC. Fortunately, they thought I was an MC deity when I had it fixed in under a minute. It's happened to one guy twice.
I wonder if it could be triggered by a sleep state in either the PC or their DAC if they leave it on and do not play audio through it?

So I've definitely seen this behavior before and it seems to be related to sleep/power transitions for me.  Fortunately there's a workaround (for my case anyway). 

If one of my DACs changes power states when my PC is awake, JRiver will sometimes "lose it" and then if I attempted to play to that zone, MC would auto reassign to a different available device.  This was especially common when I have the WDM driver enabled, as the system tone resulting from the DAC appearing or disappearing would immediately trigger the issue by causing playback in MC!  I also had the system setup to power off peripherals when the PC went to sleep.  When the PC woke up, it would power on the peripherals, but because teh peripherals only turned off after the PC was awake, the peripherals "waking up" triggered a system tone leading to MC not seeing the DAC, etc. etc.

There are a few steps you can take to minimize the risk.  One is to make sure that your DAC never changes power states while the PC is awake, which is ultimately what I wound up doing (the DAC no longer turns off with the other peripherals).  Another step is to turn off MC's auto-reconfigure option, which prevents this kind of behavior to begin with.  With the auto-reconf disabled, if I try to play to a non-existent audio output, I just get an error instead of a transparent reassignment.

This may not be your issue, but I thought I'd throw it out there as it was a source of frustration for me for a few months until I figured out the exact sequence of issues.

[fitbrit]

Thanks, mwillems.

I've been wishing all along - "if only there were a way to turn off this behaviour in MC," because it seemed like MC was trying its best to provide some sort of output rather than an error message. Frankly, I'd prefer the error message. So now I am going to go look for this auto configure option, and admonish myself for not knowing of it, or seeing it, before.

[EDIT] Found it. I personally have it on "ask". I didn't know this was the option that could be causing the problem. I thought it just changed the output parameters of the chosen output, rather than changed the output itself if not found. I guess that sort of makes sense!

[fitbrit]

Two more reports of this in the past 24 hours:

"Last night I couldn’t play back via my primary source - AES.  I found in the JRiver audio output settings that the output had been changed to a default setting and when I moved it to one of the two WASPi settings it worked.  I presume an update caused that change - I didn’t do anything.  Is this normal?  Is there anything that I can do to know if an update has affected the settings and or to protect against that?"

[JimH]

Can you determine whether it's Windows 10 or MC?

[fitbrit]

Can you determine whether it's Windows 10 or MC?

I think it's MC reacting to a Windows update. In MC, the zones are setup with a defined audio device assigned to each zone, rather than any of them being set up to use the Windows default audio device.
I think what is happening is that a Windows 10 update is changing the default Windows audio device (I see this often - it gets set to JRiver MC22, for example), and somehow that is causing MC to change the devices that have been assigned to the zones. I have no idea how MC does the zone-to-device link, but it looks like the Windows update is confusing this somehow.

[EDIT] Just another case of this came in. The audio device that should be a BNC output in MC had been set to the HDMI, which is the default device in Windows. This definitely coincided with a Windows update.

[millst]

I have had this problem with HDMI audio on NVidia cards. The device name was flip flopping (one had -4 at the end, another -8). Eventually, I found a fix. Pull up audio device properties and rename one of them to have the same name.

Frustrating that sleep/wake is still problematic on computers. Even with my audio glitches resolved, I still get problems with my displays not coming up how they were once in a while.

-tm

[fitbrit]

I have had this problem with HDMI audio on NVidia cards. The device name was flip flopping (one had -4 at the end, another -8). Eventually, I found a fix. Pull up audio device properties and rename one of them to have the same name.

Frustrating that sleep/wake is still problematic on computers. Even with my audio glitches resolved, I still get problems with my displays not coming up how they were once in a while.

-tm

That might be a separate problem. I am pretty sure now that this is an issue with MC after a Windows 10 update. All the PCs in question (and there have been two more since my last post) are Intel, not NVidia. I have seen what you describe too before, though.

[millst]

Yeah, just thought it was similar and wanted to get the info out there for others that might search and find this.

-tm

[fitbrit]

Yeah, just thought it was similar and wanted to get the info out there for others that might search and find this.

-tm

No problem. The more Windows issues people are aware of the better. But it's also good to get a handle on when issues might be distinct too, so we can keep the data about each separate.