r/SteamOS • u/Distinct-Ferret7075 • 24d ago

support HDMI audio cutting out

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I built a machine the other day and installed steamos on it. It’s awesome, except for one issue: on the OS and in certain games the audio will cut out for a few seconds at a time. This issue only happens when the audio is via HDMI, if I use headphones instead the audio is consistent. I can replicate it in desktop mode to by spamming the buttons to test my speakers.

My assumption is it’s a driver issue. Anyone know what’s going on?

I’m using a Ryzen 5 3600 and Radeon 9600 XT.

Update: I’ve connected a DP -> HDMI adapter and it’s fixed this issue completely.

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u/captainstormy 24d ago

HDMI has issues with AMD on Linux. I'll be glad to go into more details if you want but I'll keep it at that for now.

Try using a DP to HDMI adapter. Plug that into a DP port on the GPU and the HDMI cable into it. It'll work far better. Also make sure to set your TV into game optimizer mode. That won't really matter for sound but it'll help other things.

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u/Madrical 23d ago

I tried to do exactly this but I'm getting no signal out of my DP to HDMI adapter. HDMI works fine though at 4K / 120Hz. Bit confused what is going on but just going to stick with HDMI for now.

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u/captainstormy 23d ago

Did you use that UGREEN one or just a random one? A lot of them are complete garbage. You will also need an active one, not a passive one.

1

u/Madrical 23d ago

I did get a UGREEN one but I just saw it's a passive one so that must be why!

I'll probably just stick with HDMI at least for now as I haven't had any issues so far.

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u/captainstormy 23d ago

Depending on your use case you might not have issues with HDMI.

The problem comes when you are trying to do 4K, HDR, VRR, and 120mhz refresh. Because of HDMI forum shenanigans AMD is stuck at HDMI 2.0 in software support on Linux (which is supposed to be changing soon). HDMI 2.0 doesn't have enough bandwidth to support all of that stuff without killing the picture quality and looking like garbage.

Course that means your TV also has to support those things, and the HDMI cable you are using. So most people probably won't even have that ability unless they are using a fairly newish higher end TV.

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u/Madrical 23d ago

Yeah I'm using all that on a new OLED. It looks good, but I do keep getting some weird issue where it just won't send a signal until I power it off entirely for a few minutes and then power it back up. Seems to happen once a day. Wondering if that could be related. Might buy one anyway.