Audio not starting immediately

[Mike Daniell]

I've been setting up a cue file on a new computer purchased by one of the theatre groups I'm involved with, and found that often when I played an audio cue the progress bar would move but no sound would be heard for the first few seconds. I reproduced the same problem using Windows Media Player. I then looked on Google for an explanation/solution and found this solution on reddit.com: Audio doesn't start right away when playing music or video.

The solution explained in this link is:

... there's an easy registry fix.

Navigate to this key:

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4d36e96c-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\xxxx\PowerSettings
Where xxxx is one of the numbers for an audio driver that has "Realtek High Definition Audio" as the DriverDesc key value.

Change IdlePowerState value to be 00 00 00 00 instead of 03 00 00 00. This changes the delay from 3 seconds to 0 seconds. By the end you should see all 3 keys in that PowerSettings section read out 4 sets of 00.

I applied this change and it fixed the problem, although I did have to restart Windows for the change to take effect. I've no idea why Realtek would by default apply a 3-second delay after being idle.

[Buyaicia]

YES, YES, YES!!!

I have a HP OMEN laptop with realtek audio device that have this issue. Usually it is not a problem because I use an external audio module but it was annoying while testing with the internal audio.

Thanks for sharing this trick.

Regards,
Lluís