Realtek HD SPDIF Cuts in and Out on Windows 7

I've got an HP retail HTPC that has a Realtek HD onboard sound card and I'm running SPDIF out to my Onkyo reciever. For the longest time, it worked pretty darned well. The only oddity was that flipping a lightswitch or something of the sort would make the sound cut out for about a second (weird, I know. But, it was ignorable).

Now, the sound has started cutting out for longer, and more frequent periods of time. I notice that when this happens, the dolby digital indicator on the receiver blinks off, then back on when it comes back in.

The problem seems to not happen as frequently when I first boot, and later gets more common. And, to make me really feel crazy, the cutting in and out sometimes seems to correspond exactly to when I fiddle with the cable - but sometimes not at all and at many times it just works wonderfully.

I've tried updating to the latest drivers. No lucky.

Anybody have any ideas at all?

Solution 1:

this seem to happen while high CPU usage or sound software conflicts, I just recommend closing all unused application/services, disabling the sound card utility and all enabled enhancements (under the windows playback devices proprieties).see if you can get some results.