Google: 95% YouTube audio issues are on Windows, mostly due to drivers | Hacker News Reader

Google: 95% YouTube audio issues are on Windows, mostly due to drivers

windowslatest.com

25 pointsjojonathan11 comments

From the article:

> Google believes that there are three main reasons for audio issues – users have accidentally muted YouTube, the output device has been changed (this happens when users have two monitors with one audio connection), and the third reason is Windows 10’s drivers.

It certainly isn't "mostly due to drivers", but is at least "frequently due to drivers" as it's in the top 3 (but maybe not top 1, where 'most' would be meant).

Also, this mostly speaks to Windows being the most popular operating system in the consumer pc world; and further, to the varied collection of Windows computer configurations. Windows machine users are probably more likely to use more than one monitor, and especially to use monitors with HDMI, where sound is most likely to be carried over and confuse the multiple sound devices.

I take issue with the editorialized title here on Hacker News.

edit: I don't like Microsoft, why am I finding myself defending them so much, lately? Can we at least be honest about the problems with Microsoft, rather than make them the random big baddies in areas that they're not?

>Also, this mostly speaks to Windows being the most popular operating system in the consumer pc world;

Yep! Like xkcd 1138 would say, this "95% of X is Windows users" just boils down to a population map.

“According to Google, YouTube receives hundreds of reports per day from users who complain that video plays without audio on desktop and 95% of reports come alone from Windows users.“

“ Microsoft Windows is the dominating desktop operating system (OS) worldwide as of December 2020, with a share of 76.56 percent.”

> Can we at least be honest about the problems with […], rather than make them the random big baddies in areas that they're not?

I feel like this applies to basically everything recently. I don’t know what to do about it :(

I've been defending indefensible people, at least in my own mind (as defending them in the public square is just a place to be mocked and downvoted and no opinions are changed), when the attacks on them are unrelated to the reason they're not great.

That includes being disappointed in people talking about Trump's small hands, among other things.

The article's real headline is "Windows 10: Microsoft to fix Chrome and YouTube’s critical audio issues" - the post should be changed to reflect this.

For me - every time I update my NVIDIA card's drivers, the default output gets reset to be HDMI.

Same. Every time I update my Nvidia drivers I have to go and re-disable all the "NVIDIA High Definition Audio" playback devices in the Sounds settings. The best way for me to make sure Windows uses the correct playback device is to only have one enabled.

If you do a custom install of the driver package you can choose to not install the HD audio component. It has saved me from this exact hassle many times.

Well the audio issues on chrome cast devices when there is a still image during playback of 60 fps YouTube videos is not a windows issues but Google breaking their own hardware issue.

https://support.google.com/chromecast/thread/84670684?hl=en

Windows is in serious need of a new audio subsystem. Something that can replace ASIO, be low latency, multi-channel, allow app audio sharing (which is hit or miss with ASIO), and support rate changes and automatic rate conversion. Essentially CoreAudio for Windows with backwards compatibility with ASIO and MMD. Implement it right, and it can be driverless, much as most audio interfaces are driverless on Mac. It's just such a mess (but not as much of a mess as Linux's audio zoo of incompatible libraries).

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