Game audio cutting issue, the rest is fine (I have tried as much as I could, can't figure it out on my own)

[bySkriK]

The issue itself is pretty simple: sound seems to cut at times ONLY when playing games, but only the game itself. If I play and I'm listening music on Spotify or Google Chrome for example, those ones don't get affected/cut, but I can still hear the game audio cutting. FEELS like the problem can be recreated when I use the game + open up other audio sources, as the 2 mentioned before. To ''solve'' the issue, what feels like to work best is to unplug-plug my headset and to Restart the audio engine. I'm sorry to ask this, but I have tried almost everything I found on this forum or with online research, but I can't seem to figure out the problem by myself, so I'm kindly asking for help.

Things that I tried at the moment:

- Setting Voicemetter Input as default playback and using default device ingame, as explained by Vincent in Voicemeeter and Statics, Stuttering, Crackling sound & Choppy audio
- Swapping some devices to MME, but it results in crackling noise from those devices (microphone and Spotify).
- Tuning up WDM buffering from standard to 768 aprox
- Checking all devices connected are working to same Hz value, this being 48k
- Checking all devices connected are working at exclusive mode, but despite checking the box in Windows sound settings, it still shows the S of Shared in System Tray. Can't use MME for the cracking sound mentioned before, but using MME shows those devices without S.
- Tuning up VAIO value from standard 7168 samples to higher.

I used to have this problem 2 years ago, but I thought I solved it by changing some devices to MME + setting WDM buffer up, but without changing any settings, the problem came back after all this time. I'm providing screenshots of my configuration, but it's pretty standard. Thank you to anyone that can offer some insight, much appreciated.

[Vincent Burel]

You configuration seems to be correct.

You may check your CPU load to see if there is no CPU peak generated by the game that could disturb the audio.

Could you click on black field "SR : 48000 buf : 512" to open the AUDIO QOS Statistics dialog box and post a screenshot ?

[bySkriK]

For sure, thanks Vincent. 2 images, first from after 1h, second after 2.




I've been testing for 2h trying to recreate the error but couldn't, a day ago I changed audiodg.exe from task manager and set affinity to CPU 1 (I saw some other posts online), I know that shouldn't be doing nothing relevant but maybe is helping? Will update in some days. In case I have more errors I will try to check CPU peaks with ProcessExplorer.

Thanks again for the reply

[Vincent Burel]

if you cannot link the crackling to CPU activity (when playing to your game), You can maybe try to set the System Timer Resolution back to 1ms (instead of 0.499 on your screenshot) in Voicemeeter since some gamers already told us this could disturb audio in some cases with some games...

to do so, create a DWORD Value “TimerResolution” to '1' in Voicemeeter registry key: Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\VB-Audio\VoiceMeeter
restart Voicemeeter (or your computer if not enough).

check if it fix your problem and let me know...

[bySkriK]

Update for anyone to see, audiodg.exe did nothing, was a placebo effect pretty sure. Couldn't link CPU peaks with that, so I tried what Vincent suggested.
At the moment, thing is working well, or at the very least, much better than before. Creating TimerResolution in the registry seems to work, only thing, it changed to 0'5 instead of 1 ms. I tried like 10 times, and twice it was set to 1 ms, but changed to 0'5 after a little bit. Despite that, seems that is going well, so, thank you. If I have any news, I will edit this post, and I hope it can help more people if needed.

Lastly, ¿is there anywhere I can learn about system timer resolution? I'm curious how it changed from the default 0'5 to 0'499 or why it seems it can't change to 1.

Again, thank you

EDIT: Had more issues now, with only game open, doesn't seem there's anything specific. For de TimerResolution I'm opening regedit, \HKEY_CURRENT_USER\VB-Audio\VoiceMeeter, create Value DWORD 32 bits, set name to TimerResolution, value 1 (hexadecimal). Having it changes to 0'5 and not 1, not having it swaps back to 0'499.

EDIT 2: Today it's working at 1 ms, but had some audio game cuts. IT FEELS LIKE that sometimes it crashes from the 1ms and later it changes to 0'5, that I think is the default? Which Idk if it's working fine yet, need more testing.