Windows 7: Sound Suddenly Stops During Gaming

Hi,



I think that Windows might be disabling my sound device during gaming because it thinks it is idle. I don't know if this is the exact reason but after much testing have come to this conclusion.

Anyway, the problem is that while playing some games (for example Borderlands, Civ 5) the sound will be fine but after a while playing the sound will cut off completely. It seems to occur when I am playing a game for more than an hour although I can't be very specific. If I exit the game and try to play an MP3 etc in WMP then the program just behaves like it's trying to do something in the background and won't actually play the file. There are no system sounds or any other sound at all.

This doesn't happen in all games, for example, when I play Audiosurf then the sound plays as normal no matter how long I play. This is why I think it may be a Windows issue thinking my sound card is idle and then turning it off because when I play Audiosurf, the game plays my MP3 files and so presumably Windows knows my sound card is in use but when I play any other game that just uses the game's own sound files/effects, then Windows isn't recognising this and after a certain period of time is then disabling my sound card.

Does anyone know of a solution for this or has come across something similar? I have an external sound card that is connected via USB (Line 6 Toneport UX2). Let me know if you require any more system specs, oh I'm using Win 7 HP 64bit btw.

Please can someone help me with this as it's driving me mad and when gaming online and chatting to my friend through Skype, the sound will suddenly just go off. While he can still hear me talking into the mic, I can't hear him or the game's sounds/music and he has to resort to typing me messages in-game.

Sorry for the long post but I wanted to try and describe the problem in as much detail as possible. Thanks for any help.

I would start in the Gaming section, since it apparently only happens with gaming.

Strange that you are using the Toneport for your "sound card" rather than a standard PC sound card. (I use a Line 6 POD XT for effects on my guitar).

Thanks for the reply Fireberd, I have posted a new thread in the gaming section now.

The reason I am using the Toneport as my main sound card (although as you know, it isn't technically a sound card) is because it has more of the inputs/outputs I need for recording music than a standard sound card has (or had at the time of buying it). I make a lot of music on my PC and the Toneport is great for connecting guitars or any other audio source into the line-in's and also has some line-out's which can go directly to my speaker set up.

I do have it selected as my default sound device and it works great, just seems to be a problem when gaming for some reason. I don't think that's down to the Toneport itself though. The sound turning off doesn't happen every time I play a game though. I played Civ 5 last night for around 1.5 to 2 hours and it was fine throughout, I think the longer I play a game, the more likely it is to happen, although as I said, it's very intermitant and so is hard to pin point an exact reason or sequence of events that cause it to happen.

Oh, recording. OK that makes more sense. I have a recording studio using Sonar with a Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 recording interface unit. But, I only use the Saffire Pro 40 with Sonar. All "regular" PC sound uses my PC's sound card.

I also have the POD Farm software that can be used with Sonar as is a VST plug in.

That's some nice kit! I'm afraid I'm recording on a budget and so it's just the Toneport for all sound and Mixcraft for recording software. My friend's got the Pod Farm software but it doesn't integrate very well as a VST we find with Mixcraft, plus it's really fiddly for selecting line inputs for recording via the Toneport (he has a Toneport KB37 which is basically the same as mine but with a built-in midi keyboard).

We tend to record a lot of external sources like a Korg ESX-1, guitars, effects etc and so the Toneport's are ideal for this (although we can only usually record one source at a time).

Anyway, back to the original topic, I think I may have solved this after being provided a solution in my thread over in the gaming forum. It looks as though it was my power settings for USB devices under USB selective power settings on the power plan's advanced section. It was enabled so I've set it to disabled now, so hopefully that should stop the Toneport being turned off while gaming.

Sounds like that may fix the problem.

I use my POD XT with my Pedal Steel Guitar. I developed a clean preamp/EQ tone that I can use with the steel for recording and go direct to the "board" (an input on the Saffire Pro 40). Since Pedal Steel, in almost all cases, is a clean signal (no distortion/overdrive) going direct works great. I recently tracked a steel track for a recording studio in New Zealand for a song (Bob Dylan's "You Aint Going Nowhere") and they really liked it. It was a project for a school, and the CD is being released next month and it will also be on iTunes (they got legal permission from Dylan for the project).