audio silliness

[honegod]

I replaced my motherboard with a asus strix Z490i gaming.
I plugged the adptor cable into the jack of the motherboard rear panel .
and then into the standalone amp which pushes a stereo pair of speakers.
got no audio output.
fiddled for a couple days and the audio on the TV, plugged into the 1050ti hdmi started working,
a couple days later the amp and speakers just started working. working fine, nothing to see here.

a couple weeks later, today, I install the latest windows10 updates , and the audio quits working.
is it likely that the fiddling that fixed the audio the first time was me installing drivers from asus that overwrote the windows drivers and work,
and the windows update overwrote the working drivers with the broke windows "up to date" drivers ?
I saw nothing that gave me anything that looked like an audio driver selection to choose from.

watching Drachinifel is far less fun without audio.

 

[honegod]

the fact that I am getting no sound from BOTH the motherboard jack and the videocard hdmi seems to be important.
that I have seen sound from the hdmi when the jack was silent should have meaning.
but not so much to me.
(running a youtube video for audio input in the background)
and then after a half hour from latest restart, the hdmi started working, while typing this.
switching to realtec speakers in sound control brought silence, switching back to hdmi stayed quiet.
for a couple minutes then came back on.
W T F

 

[Nobu]

Some drivers support reassigning the outputs, and sometimes they get assigned to a channel (say left-rear) that has no output usually, so make sure that's good.

Windows also now (finally) supports selecting an output device from the volume control in the taskbar--make sure that didn't change randomly...sometimes it does and doesn't change back.

Finally (or maybe firstly) check your audio and power cables, make sure they're fully plugged and undamaged.

 

[honegod]

firstly) check your audio and power cables, make sure they're fully plugged and undamaged.

yes, I am confident that it is not a cable problem, the cables are not seeing a signal.

selecting an output device from the volume control in the taskbar

yes, that is how I am swapping between speaker and hdmi outputs

sometimes they get assigned to a channel (say left-rear) that has no output usually, so make sure that's good.

if that is the problem it is reassigning the outputs RANDOMLY and then switching them back spontaneously.
which is just the style of thing I am seeing going on.

 

[honegod]

it occurs to me that a USB stick audio converter would be a third test source for this problem,
but I have no idea how to interpret any data that might emerge.

 

[OFaceSIG]

HDMI from the video card and the rear audio not functioning sounds like a core windows problem. As you surmised that it cut out after an update. You need to test a third source. USB audio stick, USB headset, something. Sometimes some of those can be had for as little as 20 bucks. If one of those is plugged in and still doesn't work, it sounds like a classic case of re-install Windows.

 

[honegod]

re-install Windows

reasonable.
additional context : I took the M.2 C drive off the failed Strix H270i and plugged it into the Z490i replacement.
windows worked fine, but no internet. I downloaded the z490 drivers/firmware from asus, the internet came on but the audio went away.
then the audio came back, as described above.

so I have suspicions about the motherboard TOO.
the hdmi and audio jacks are two different plugs on the board and usb would make 3, each using different circuits on the motherboard, with different firmware/drivers.

what I need is a AI to trace the signal paths through the software space from input of signal, the network plug for youtube audio, and a sata plug for flac from the Music harddrive, to the various outputs.
looking for common failure nodes.

looking at it from outside,
if all combinations of sound paths behave the same it would seem to tend to eliminate the hardware paths as suspect.