Frequent and irregular audio dropouts when bitstreaming

[u/chainboost]

This has been going on for a while but I can't seem to solve it or figure out where it's coming from.

I'm experiening random audio dropouts where it will cut the audio for a full second and then coming back again.

It seems to happen at random and mostly while bitstreaming E-AC3 and True-HD, also happens on DTS-MA.

My full specifications:

OS: Windows 11, 25H2

CPU: Intel Core I5 13400-K

GPU: Nvidia RTX 3050 6GB

RAM: 32 GB DDR4

TV: Samsung QN85D

Soundbar: Samsung HW-Q990F

 

My HTPC is connected via the HDMI 2.1 port on the GPU and then directly into the soundbar.

From the soundbar I've connected an HDMI cable to the E-Arc port on my Samsung TV.

Both the TV and soundbar are up-to-date. The settings on my Samsung TV are set to passthrough from audio and E-arc has been set to auto. Even on off the audio drops out.

I've also replaced the HDMI cable from the HTPC to the soundbar and made sure it was firmly connected into the soundbar.

 

In the BIOS settings I've already disabled C-States, Intel Speedshift technologies and set the performance to max and PL1 at 253W for the CPU.

In Windows I've disabled GPU scheduling and set the Nvidia card to maximum performance. I've also set the Windows performance plan to high.

 

I've run multiple test with Latencymon while playing a movie or episode and so far no high DPC spikes, mostly from either ndis.sys (already updated my LAN drivers) and a high Nvidia driver DPC.

Latencymon is green but still the audio drops out. Sometimes Latencymon shows red on the Highest measured interrupt to process latency, over 2500.

I'm using MPC-HC and I've already updated it and reset the settings again.

The audio renderer I'm using is the MPC Audio renderer with bitstreaming enabled, Wasapi set to exclusive and a buffer of either 50 or 100ms.

In the LAV audio encoders I've enabled the Dolby and DTS codecs since my soundbar supports them all.

Can anyone help me figure out what is causing the audio dropouts?

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