Digital speakers shut themselves off when no audio is playing

[bugmenot]

Hey everyone.

I have a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L motherboard with an onboard in 8-channel Realtek ALC888.

I am using the S/PDIF interface with digital speakers, and it works great. The only problem is that if no audio is being sent to the speakers, they will shut off (make a short, low, bass nosise), and the nest time I play audio, it takes about half a second to warm up to play the noise.

It's very annoying when it's a quick sound, like some kind of alert in Windows, because all I hear is the low bass noise.

Anyone know what would be causing this, and how to fix it?

Running Vista Ultimate x64

[130dB]

It is a power saving feature built into many sets of powered speakers. There is generally no way to disable it unless there is a switch on the speakers to do so.

[ecc83]

First of all if you are doing anything in the least serious with sound you should have Win bleeps, bloops and alarms turned off.

Next you should get yourself over to www.soundonsound.com check in and checkout the Blista music tweaks.

I would never run monitors from a digital link or direct from a souncards' line outs. There are technical, quality reasons against it (or so I understand) but the biggest problem is one day, sure as taxes, the system will go ape***t and there will be no handy control to dive for, this of course will happen at 2.00am the day after Mr Grumpy has threatened legal action "If you make that bloody noise again!"

And finally, on board sound systems are rarely terribly good.

Good luck BTW!

Dave.