Topic by lukas 2017-11-16 17:48:29 (edited by lukas 2017-11-16 23:39:07)

  • lukas
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  • From: Prague, Czech Republic
  • Registered: 2010-11-02
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Hi everyone,

I hope someone is going to be able to provide an answer to this question as quickly as possible, as it's having quite a serious impact on my productivity and ability to even use the computer at all, right now and the whole time. :-)

I have recently got a macBook Pro 2017, 15 inch, i.e. the largest and most recent currently available model with touch bar. I'm not going to delve too deeply into the issues with macOS that finally convinced me to give Bootcamp a try and return back to the good old Windows, with a mixture of gratitude and humbleness, let's just suffice it to say that the sole two voices available for my native language on macOS can never match the incredible speeds of NVDA's built-in Espeak NG, and that the relatively frequent, random, unexplained crashes of VoiceOver in situations like some less common websites in Safari, are enough of an issue for me to see macOS rather as a potential alternative platform for light entertainment, and to do anything that involves syncing with the iPhone on it. Any serious productive work, especially anything that needs to be done quickly, use Windows.

All right, got everything up and running in Bootcamp, am on the latest Fall Creators update and everything... But why on Earth does sound always seem to be muted every few seconds when I connect my headphones? I mean, I am only using standard earphones without a built-in microphone, I think they are made by Creative, in either case they were a pretty cheap pair, and whenever there is a slight bit of silence and then NVDA is about to speak a new phrase, like when using quick navigation to move around a page in Firefox, the audio output sounds like it has to return all the way back to the configured volume from complete silence. It almost seems to me that it's doing this for the reason of saving power at times when there is nothing to be played, or something like that. Basically, the practical result of this behavior is that every time after even a second or so long pause in speech, the next chunk of speech has the first syllable or two cut off. That makes my work much slower and some things very difficult to figure out. This never happens with the built-in speakers, the audio is perfectly clear all the time when using speakers instead of headphones. I have checked all the settings in the Sound and audio control pannel that I could think of, with no results. And there doesn't seem to be any third party bloatware like a Dolby software or anything like that, either.

Does anyone have any idea as to what I could do about this issue? Has anyone else experienced it?
Do I have the only option of waiting for Apple to perhaps eventually update the Bootcamp audio driver? Would installing an alternative driver help? Would an USB sound card help? Or anything at all?

Many thanks for a reply in advance,
Lukas

I won't be using this account any more or participating in the forum activity through other childish means like creating an alternate account. I've asked for the account to be removed but I'm not sure if that's actually technically possible here. Just writing this for people to know that I won't be replying, posting new topics or checking private messages until the account is potentially removed.

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Reply by Joseph Westhouse 2017-11-16 18:53:57

  • Registered: 2013-05-16
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This strikes me as a question for Apple support. Personally I've never had such issues running Bootcamp on my MBP, but I'm on a different model machine, and a different build of Windows, so who knows?

Do you experience the same issue with the audio if you're not using headphones? Do you experience the same issue with the audio if you use these headphones on other devices? Just trying some basic troubleshooting here...

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Reply by lukas 2017-11-16 23:38:17

  • lukas
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Hi Joseph,

thank you for such a fast reply. Actually, I was sure since the very beginning that it was not happening when running on speakers and that the headphones worked fine on other hardware. That's why I was confident enough to label the issue as specific and isolated to the particular Bootcamp audio drivers for Windows 10 Fall Creators Update for the given laptop.

The idea that this question belongs in the official Apple Support forums is a good one that has not occurred to me before. However, since I grew so fed up with the problem that I built a quick fix or rather a workaround for it in BGT in two or three minutes since creating this topic, I will now probably only give those forums a quick look to see if it's in deed common among this specific macBook users on Windows 10 Fall Creators Update.

In the meantime, if anyone is interested in my fix because of experiencing the same issue, let me know, I'll either send it to you privately or put up a Dropbox download link eventually if there is more of you. The program is nothing more than a compiled BGT script with an included pack file. This pack holds just a single wave file in stereo, 16 bits, 44,1 khz, containing exactly one second of silence, created in Goldwave. The program runs without displaying any window, loads the unencrypted wave file from the pack into a sound object, and then keeps running an infinite loop, waiting for five milliseconds on every iteration and making sure to play the file if it is not currently actively playing.

I added a link to this utility into my Startup folder, so after logging into the system and waiting for about half a minute or a little less, until the system gets to load this kind of programs that are supposed to run automatically after boot, the program works like a charm. Simple and elegant as that, on first attempt!!! :-)

Lukas

I won't be using this account any more or participating in the forum activity through other childish means like creating an alternate account. I've asked for the account to be removed but I'm not sure if that's actually technically possible here. Just writing this for people to know that I won't be replying, posting new topics or checking private messages until the account is potentially removed.

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