ALC4082 drops the start of audio (Z690 Hero)

[BobVul]

When going from an idle/silent state to a sound playing, the beginning of the sound gets cut off/never plays.

This is also apparent when short notification sounds are played. For example, sometimes almost the entire Discord message notification sound will be missed, sometimes the second half of it will play.


The most reliable way to reproduce the issue is to use the Windows sound output device "test" button, which plays a test tone on each channel sequentially. As long as no other audio is playing, some 25-50% of the time you'll hear the first tone (left) play, and then the second tone (right) will be missing the first 0.5s.

Following some forum diving, a workaround that's currently working for me is to enable listen to this device against Stereo Mix, and then set its volume to 0. The explanation offered is that this keeps the audio hardware awake, preventing the delayed wake-up issues. Doing this, the "test" button now works correctly, and I no longer have issues with notification sounds.


Here's a video of the test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuWOuM19oFM

Test 1: shows the issue
Test 2: apply the stereo mix listen workaround, issue no longer occurs
Test 3: remove the workaround, shows the issue again




My current audio driver version is 6.3.9600.2297, the latest available on the support site at https://rog.asus.com/motherboards/rog-maximus/rog-maximus-z690-hero-model/helpdesk_download.

Also can confirm that none of the BIOS versions 0237 (original), 0702, nor 0803 (newest) have any effect.

Have also tried driver version 6.3.9600.2306 from MoKiChU's package, which did not have any effect either. The problem remains the same as shown in the video linked above.


I strongly believe this is basically the "wake up delay" problem described in previous threads, e.g. https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?125652-Fed-up-with-the-ROG-STRIX-Z590-E-GAMING-WIFI-audio-..., but I was told to create a new one for the different board.

[Nuckels]

SneakyLittleman wrote:
Are you using the optical output of your motherboard? If so, this is an inevitable, well-documented bug and has nothing to do with drivers or mobo.
The spdif signal goes to "sleep" automatically when no sound is played, and the next sound will miss the first 500ms while it wakes up.
I've installed a little utility that prevents spdif from "sleeping". See:
https://github.com/handruin/spdif-ka

If you're using analog audio, then the problem lies elsewhere.

EDIT: Sorry, I'm actually using THIS tool 😄 https://veg.by/en/projects/soundkeeper/

I am using analog audio, I can keep it awake by getting stereo mix to listen to it or just having a youtube video on 24/7 but that shoudn't be needed. Appreciate the detailed response though ❤️
ps: technicly that app might just do the trick as well but ya.

[dnaeva]

Mainboard: ROG STRIX Z690-I GAMING WIFI
Link mode: S/PDIF


You don't need Firefox to reproduce this problem, and the following GIF is a demonstration.

Note that before clicking the volume button, the system should be silent for a period of time, about 30 to 60 seconds?

[STARRAIN]

Hi BobVul,
Thank you for your information.
I'll consult our tech team more about this.

[BobVul]

I now have two "Realtek HD Audio Universal Service" services running at ~6% CPU each. Note that this means they are *each* using a whole core! That's two whole cores tied up in whatever these services are doing.

Disabling Stereo Mix does not appear to affect this, so it seems unrelated to my workaround.

I believe this only appeared in one of the more recent driver updates.

It's causing a significant load on my system, and producing a fair amount of heat on top of it. Killing these services, with no noticeable impact on, well, anything, reduces my CPU temperatures by 5-10°C.

Edit: did a complete audio driver purge and reinstall, let's see if this helps any

E2: Seems okay for now, possibly one of the update installs caused it and the clean install resolved it

[STARRAIN]

Hi BobVul,
Our tech team have tested the components on hand, but didn't encounter the same notification sound cut off issue.
Do you have the issue right after you install windows?
Thank you.

[BobVul]

STARRAIN@ROG wrote:
Hi BobVul,
Our tech team have tested the components on hand, but didn't encounter the same notification sound cut off issue.
Do you have the issue right after you install windows?
Thank you.

Unfortunately I'm not really in a position to test that easily. I'll have to get back to you on that.

For what it's worth, I have managed to reproduce the issue by passing the Realtek USB audio device into a VMware Workstation VM (running on WMware hypervisor, not Hyper-V/WHP). Since at that point it's the VM's guest OS talking directly to the Realtek device as a USB peripheral, I believe this should exclude any specifics of my main Windows installation as a culprit.

If you think exploring the VM path is useful, I can write up more complete steps to reproduce.

[STARRAIN]

Hi BobVul,
Because our tech team have tested with new windows installed, but didn't reproduce the issue.
Could you please backup your personal files and reinstall windows to see if it still occurs without other apps?
Thank you.

[BobVul]

STARRAIN@ROG wrote:
Hi BobVul,
Because our tech team have tested with new windows installed, but didn't reproduce the issue.
Could you please backup your personal files and reinstall windows to see if it still occurs without other apps?
Thank you.

I can now confirm that the issue still occurs via the Firefox repro method, on a completely new installation of Windows 11, both with the default Windows audio drivers and the v2307 drivers provided by Asus/Realtek.

[BobVul]

I cannot do that at the moment, as I said in my previous response.

Please note:

* I have reproduced this issue *within a virtual machine* via USB device passthrough.
* Many others have reported this same issue

Please confirm that you are following the reproduction steps exactly:

1. Close Firefox
2. Open Firefox
3. Navigate to https://www.myinstants.com/instant/discord-notification-38119/
4. Click the button
5. Close Firefox again before re-testing




After the new year I *might* consider further tests but honestly? I'm so. goddamn. DONE. with this. Reinstalling my entire bloody system is a step too far.

My advice to anyone considering a new motherboard? Don't buy anything that has an ALC408x audio codec. Not worth the frustration.

[BobVul]

Actually let me amend those repro steps:

1. Open Firefox
2. Open a new window inside Firefox
3. Navigate to https://www.myinstants.com/instant/discord-notification-38119/
4. Click the button
5. Close the testing Firefox window but keep one window open

For some reason, opening a new window within the same instance is needed to reliably trigger this. Sorry for missing that in the original steps.