Sound stops (2 years old problem anniversary)

[LithiumIO]

Yep so this issue has been around for about 2 years for quite a lot of people. I preface this thread with a question;

HOW IN THE F'ELL IS THIS PROBLEM NOT FIXED YET?

I'm a technical engineer and software developer, and have been in the I.T. industry for about 23 years now... and this problem is sending me completely insane.

The sound on my
rift completely drops out after anywhere from 1 minute to 1 hour of
use. If the HMD is not "active" (as in, wearing it) the sound will last
1+ hours, but if it's active it usually lasts about 2-3 minutes most of
the time. The sound VU meter in Windows "freezes" on whatever sound
level was playing at the time - sound continues to play through my
normal headphones and/or speakers while the rift just stops.

I
just bought a brand new PC and this problem has only started to happen
on my BRAND NEW (Windows 10 (<sarcasm>yay!</sarcasm>) computer. My 8 year old system (Windows 7) I
never had any problem until the mainboard finally gave up on me about 3
weeks ago. The problem started happening immediately after installing
the rift on my brand new rig. I reinstalled Windows 10 from scratch at
the beginning of all of this thinking something installed badly, yet the
problem remained.

So far to resolve the problem myself (with zero luck) I have also tried the following:

- rebooting my PC (the best oculus support website could offer me as a solution (pretty lame))
-
3 different drivers for my sound device including the manufacturer
driver from Asus for Realtek sound. The Windows default sound driver,
and the nvidia driver that was installed with my graphics card - then
tried combinations of most of the following steps with each driver
installed.
- removing and disabling ALL other sound devices including headphones and speakers, etc
- Disabling "enhancements" in the audio settings
- Changing sound quality from DVD to CD
- using a passive extension cable for USB and HMDI
- using an active extension cable for USB and HDMI
- using NO extension cable for USB and HDMI
- plugging the headset into USB 3.1
- plugging the headset into USB 3.0
- plugging the headset into USB 2.0
- plugging the headset into a USB 3.0 controller card PCI-E
- plugging the headset into a USB 2.0 controller card PCI-E
- disconnecting EVERYTHING except for the headset from USB, including the sensors, mouse, keyboard, etc
- reinstalling oculus home
- running the oculus driver updater tool
- changing the cable on the HMD from my old (broken LCD) headset that oculus won't supply replacement LCD screens for
- changing USB hub power management settings to never power off
- installing and trying the third party oculus tray tool
- installing a creative labs PCI-E sound card and completely bypassing the onboard sound
- set rift to primary sound device
- set rift not to primary sound device
- uninstalled discord
- uninstalled ASUS AI software
- performed dsim /online /cleanup-image /scanhealth in powershell as admin
- performed dsim /online /cleanup-image /checkhealth in powershell as admin
- performed dsim /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth in powershell as admin
- performed sfc /scannow in powershell as admin
- toggled enabled/disabled audio mirroring in oculus home
- toggled spatial sound on/off
- removed and reattached headphones
- removed headphones and cleaned contacts with isopropal alcohol on a cotton top and reattached
- used headphones from my broken LCD rift
-
totally caved in and tried my HMD with the broken left LCD screen to
see if maybe my new rift has suddenly had some issue... guess what? SAME
PROBLEM!
- probably some other stuff I've forgotten about after the THREE WEEKS I've spent trying to figure this out!
            - like how I did the latest forced firmware update when it was recently pushed out (last couple of weeks I think?)

            - like how I also checked for any obvious Windows updates that may have contributed and removed them (I don't have an exact list)

The
only way I can get sound back without totally restarting oculus runtime
service, or rebooting entire PC etc is to open the sound controls in
Windows 10, go to properties of the rift headset and toggle the "disable
all enhancements" option in the enhancements tab. If it's on, I turn it
off, and vice versa. Sound will then return for a minute or three
before doing the exact same thing again.

I'm well an truly over
this... this simple problem had rendered my HMD pretty much completely
useless now, as sound is kind of a big deal!

Hopefully someone
has some answers since this problem easily dates back to early/mid 2016
just by doing some quick google searches. After extensively reading
every shred of information I could find about this problem, NONE of the
things that people claim fixed their problem seem to have fixed mine,
and then-some. I tried every single thing from every support thread,
reddit post, steam community suggestion, etc etc.

PLEASE HELP ME!

PC specs:

AMD Ryzen 7 2700X

ROG Strix X470-F Mainboard

16Gb Corsair RGB 3466 DDR4

Gigabyte GTX1060 graphics card (updating to RTX card soon!)

Samsung EVO 970 M.2 500Gb

a bunch of 2-4Tb mechanical SATA drives

900W 80amp Thermaltake PSU

[LithiumIO]

I'm bumping this because the thread was deleted for some reason within an hour of creating it, and now that it's mysteriously returned it's been pushed so far off the front page I'm not sure it will be noticed.

First and last bump, for great justice.

[Guternoob]

I have the same problem 😞

[falken76]

It's a physical problem with the unit.  The audio channels are routed through a ribbon cable that goes around the entire headset.  The band provides the audio and the LEDS for the camera's to see the back of the headset.  Over time, the audio channels get fatigued and the connection breaks and what you're experiencing is like a short.  This happened to my brothers rift, nothing could fix it, so he just bought a set of wireless bluetooth headphones and uses them now.  They're actually nice, they sound better than rift but it sucks when they run out of battery power because we just have to quit playing whatever game we're co-oping in.  This problem doesn't seem to effect the LEDs on the back of the unit.  If your rift is still in Warranty, you can get an RMA by opening a ticket and going through that whole process.  If it's too late for that, the Bluetooth headphones work great.

[LithiumIO]

falken76 said:

It's a physical problem with the unit.

Except my HMD works fine on another computer, and another HMD on my system does the exact same thing.

[kilwrath]

I'm having a similar problem.  At first, it was super intermittent and I found switching my audio quality to CD Quality resolved the issue.  But for the last week, the audio drops are regular and happen within 5-30 minutes of using any game.  Whatever game I'm playing will also stop fully working. 

For example - in Beat Saber, the blocks will all freeze when the sound drops away, but I can still use the Oculus button to trigger the exit menu and navigate back through the menu system.  Same experience in other games - the actual game portion will stop functioning, but I can usually access the menu systems if needed and can always exit back to Oculus Home.

Once I'm back in Oculus Home (regular or beta, doesn't make a difference), the sound will still be missing.  If I shut down Oculus Home, 9/10 times the Oculus headphones will immediately start working for any other sound output.  If I relaunch Oculus Home, I'm back in business - for 5-30 minutes tops before the whole process starts again.

In that 1/10 case, even an Oculus Home restart won't work.  I have to reboot the PC entirely to get sound to the headphones.  Sound through any other output works fine when this happens (speakers, other headphones).  

AMD Ryzen 5 1500X
MSI B350 PC MATE
G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 
SAPPHIRE Radeon R9 290 100362SR 4GB GPU

WD Blue 3D 500GB SSD (WDS500G2B0A)
Corsair RM650x, 650 Watt PSU

I've confirmed all my drivers are up to date and Oculus Home is up to date (v1.30.0.676007).  I've played with all the standard solutions to audio problems and no combination of settings has resolved this issue.

[LithiumIO]

Hey kilwrath,

What version of Windows are you using? I'm on Windows 10 Enterprise and I (and Oculus Support) feel like this may be related.

I also still have this issue it's been going on for a few MONTHS now and it's beyond irritating. It's really stopped me enjoying and playing my Rift at all for the most part.

One tip you can try is to restart the Oculus Runtime Service, not just restarting Home. This works every time for me and it takes less time than rebooting the entire PC. You can also restart the audio service for Windows, and that usually works but sometimes it still doesn't as well.

One last thing worth mentioning from my experience, is that there will be huge amounts of visual latency to the headset for anywhere between 3 and 30 seconds where it gets super low FPS - then the sound dies and the FPS returns to normal.

[kilwrath]

I'm running Windows 10 Home. 

I think I might have fixed the problem, at least temporarily.  I pulled all the headset and sensor USB/HDMI connections, rebooted the PC, then reconnected them all.  I was able to play for 90 minutes last night with no loss of sound, which is the longest I've been able to do so in the past few weeks.  No idea if it's actually fixed, but it's a good sign for sure.

[cybereality]

Sounds like some sort of software / driver conflict on your computer. Asus AI Suite and Sonic Suite are known to cause audio issues, as is M-Audio, which should be uninstall. Also the other 3rd party apps that can cause performance problems, f.lux, MSI Afterburner, RivaTuner, TeamViewer, etc.

[LithiumIO]

kilwrath said:

I'm running Windows 10 Home. 

I think I might have fixed the problem, at least temporarily.  I pulled all the headset and sensor USB/HDMI connections, rebooted the PC, then reconnected them all.  I was able to play for 90 minutes last night with no loss of sound, which is the longest I've been able to do so in the past few weeks.  No idea if it's actually fixed, but it's a good sign for sure.

I've also done this and had it last a bit longer, up to a couple of hours. The latest thing I've done is put a third USB controller card in (the other two didn't help) that has a different chipset controller than the first two... still happens but seems to last longer (I get about 15-20 minutes now instead of 30 seconds-3 minutes).

I'm on annual leave from work this week, so hoping to find the time to try another Windows install and see if that helps... I'm not confident it will at this point as I've tried literally everything else, and Oculus support can't tell me anything specific about my hardware (any known issues, etc). My mainboard is an X470 chipset (relatively new) and the problem only started with my new PC and Windows 10 install... my old PC with windows 7 worked fine!