Jump to content

I feel like I bought one giant BUG


Favid_Feynman

Recommended Posts

I bought a HTC Vive Pro a few weeks ago and I have not been able to enjoy one single session with it without dealing with bugs. I won't even go into all of them, the most common one is audio not playing through the headphone speakers. Googling reveals numerous people reporting the issue.

 

I've tried everything, installing and uninstalling the software, drivers, etc.

 

I keep the hub connected to the same USB port and don't connect or disconnect anything else from the computer. I select it to always play audio through the headset.

 

Next thing I know, it's back to the computer speakers. Then I select it back to HTC Vive, no sound. Then I have to either turn the hub on and off, or uninstall and reinstall the drivers.

 

To make matters worse, the engineers didn't even design a freaking test tone into the sound settings. Seriously?! So I have to keep trying to start a freaking game looking through the headset to do something that should create sound in the game, so I can troubleshoot! And I don't even invite guests to try it because it's going to be embarassing to have to spend 5-10 minutes getting the sound to work.

 

Laptop is Asus GL702V with GTX1080. Hard to put into words what a disgusting experience owning this has been, I feel like I threw away $3500. Hope there is a solution, very frustrated right now, every aspect of the purchase from beginning to end has been a bad experiece, this is just the biggest one. End of rant.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd suggest keeping the VIVE disabled in Playback Devices and just run an additional headphone cable alonside the VIVE cables from the Computer.  

 

I've seen this same issue with another 3D HMD display using HDMI.   The sound signal was often dropped if I loaded up a demanding title.  I found it was less frustrating to just keep the HMD disabled in the Playback Devices and run a cable headphone cable along with the HMD cables.  

 

You can also get bluetooth headphones pretty cheap these days. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh, didn't realize you were using the Pro.   My HMD with that issue also has large integrated ear cups and I wore small ear buds underneath.  Was annoying but solved the issue for the time being.    

 

Sorry I couldn't be more help.  I'd steer more towards the Laptop being the culprit in this issue, or whereever the HDMI cable is plugged in. I'm pretty certain its HDMI related since it sounds identical to what I was just  experiencing. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The audio issue is likely a combination of how windows and SteamVR are interfacing together. I've seen this type of behavior across a range of hardware and software combos and overall the most universal solution is to use the "Playback Devices" to enable/disable your output devices as required. I typically disable  my laptop speaker, start SteamVR, and then reenable and mirror to it if required. 

 

On a side note, a current limitation of Unity that is it's not currently hot swappable with audio devices so Unity apps typically need to be restarted when adjusting audio configurations. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I click on the little icon on the headset to open up settings, go to audio, and do it from there, which I assume is what you are referring as Steam settings (I thought it was Vive but same thing I suppose). In windows it always shows whatever I've set it to in steam.

However I followed David's advice last night and disabled all my other audio devices in Windows and low and behold, at least for that session, audio just worked!

So hopefully that solves the issue as I don't care about the other audio devices. I'll find out soon enough if it's a long term fix.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Here is an update with the hope I can improve this (still existing) issue. If I just have the headset connected with no game playing and I go to the Windows volume control on the taskbar, the only playback device is "Speaker (Vive Pro Multimedia Audio)". I disabled the built in speakers so those do not show up.

 

However the moment I start a game, an additional playback device of "HTC VIVE Pro (NVIDIA High Definition Audio)" appears.

 

Is this normal - why do I have two different playback devices showing up for the headset? It appears that sometimes audio (for the headset) plays regardless of which playback device is selected, on other occasions it only plays on one of them, but not the other one. And sometimes it doesn't play no matter which one is selected..until I close and reopen etc.

 

I also notice if I disable the NVIDIA one it shows up again enabled.

 

Thanks

Link to comment
Share on other sites


 wrote:

The audio issue is likely a combination of how windows and SteamVR are interfacing together. I've seen this type of behavior across a range of hardware and software combos and overall the most universal solution is to use the "Playback Devices" to enable/disable your output devices as required. I typically disable  my laptop speaker, start SteamVR, and then reenable and mirror to it if required. 

Since you can obviously replicate the problem, is HTC or Valve working to fix this, and the many other problems, that are plaguing Vive (especially Pro) users?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...