[Rewritten for conciseness and clarity.]
My setup: I have a PreSonus AudioBox USB connected to my laptop (Asus G750Z-DB73) via USB 3.0. The AudioBox driver, bundled with the app “Universal Control”, is regularly updated (currently v2.5.3). I’m running Windows 8.1 Pro (x64).
As of a couple weeks ago (I cannot remember whether this coincides with an AudioBox driver update), my computer’s audio frequently and randomly cuts out; no apps make any sound, and the volume slider doesn’t produce any “ding” when clicked (the little green volume level bar is frozen). I fix this by either restarting the Windows Audio service in Task Manager or manually disconnecting and reconnecting the AudioBox USB cable; afterwards the audio starts working immediately. I still have to restart most open apps (such as Firefox) to “unmute” them, though.
This happens very unpredictably; the sound can cut out five times in as many minutes whilst watching a video, then keep working without issue for the next several hours.
Pursuant to the replies, I’ve checked the Event Viewer, and I found something interesting: Under “Application and Services Logs > Microsoft > Windows > Audio”, the “GlitchDetection” log is absolutely packed with events (it says “Number of events: 2,597 (!) New events available”), up to dozens per second. Most of them are the same (the numbers vary slightly):
Engine Glitch: CP Server Output Endpoint - Read Pointer Overwrite: pCCrossProcessServerOutputEndpoint=[0x1e2a190770] WriteOffset=[2478] ReadOffset=[2478] BytesToWrite=[442]
There’s also a bunch that says Server Input Endpoint rather than Output.
Does anyone have any idea how to troubleshoot this? I’m really not any kind of expert. Any and all help is appreciated.
Update: Found something else when the sound cut just now: In Event Viewer, under “Application and Services Logs > Microsoft > Windows > Audio > PlaybackManager”, there’s just as many events, and they reveal that the sampling rate switches a lot between the default:
Format: 3
Sampling rate: 48000Hz
Offloaded: false
… to something like:
Format: 1
Sampling rate: 22050Hz
Offloaded: false
I don’t know why it keeps switching back and forth, but it seems to coincide with a lot of the audio crashes.
Even more update: My AudioBox USB driver/firmware just updated to v2.6.0, and the release notes say this:
Fixed In This Release:
USB Audio - Windows SupportFixed an issue introduced with UC 2.5.2 where Windows audio would stop streaming after a DPC spike in system. This is now fixed with a new device driver in UC for all USB Audio capable interfaces and mixers for Windows platforms.
No idea what a “DPC spike” is, but “issue introduced”, “Windows audio would stop” and so on makes me think this may be precisely my problem. I’ve installed the new driver, and if the issue doesn’t come back (it’s been ongoing since I last posted), then the problem really was a driver issue. I’ll update here in a while with an answer if the problem really is gone (if I remember to).
