So I've been noticing this for a while, but it's finally gotten bad enough for me to start looking for ways to fix it. I notice that when I turn on or pair a bluetooth device in windows 8, whatever audio is currently playing gets its volume turned way down until the audio is stopped and the device begins playing again. It's not being turned down via the volume mixer - it remains the same - it simply gets quieter. I noticed this in the oldbie lounge - I had clicked on a topic and the music was playing, when I grabbed my bluetooth keyboard to type a reply. As soon as I turned on the keyboard, the music became very quiet. Again, looking at the audio mixer, nothing has changed - everything is still turned up the way I like it. If I exit the oldbie lounge and re-enter (thus stopping and restarting the audio) it returns to its previous volume. I've noticed this happens in XBMC as well. No way to turn the audio back up on the currently playing video, but if I skip to a different video it returns to the original volume. I did this the other day by turning on a wiimote (which is set to pair with the PC). As soon as I turned on the wiimote, the audio got quiet. Tried googling for this, nothing. I've never seen this issue before. Any ideas how to fix it? Windows 8.1 btw.
I have an strangely similar issue. When I connect my Wii remote to my PC (don't have any other bluetooth devices), although my audio VOLUME doesn't change... my left speaker goes out. I have 6 physical speakers in this headset, and only that one goes out. I have no idea why. It only happens the first time I do it, too. If I re-plug my headset and connect devices after that point, everything works fine (most of the time). Stupid idea, though. Check this: I don't recall if this changes it in the mixer though, and if it does I suppose it isn't your problem, but it's worth a shot! If that isn't it and you ever end up figuring it out, let me know so I can try it too :specialed: Edit: CURSE YOU />!
It was set to reduce sound by 80%, so I set it to do nothing and reconnected my keyboard and wiimote and the sound didn't dip. But, I should have noted in my OP that this behavior of reducing the audio seems random. So who knows. I'll play with it a few days and let you know if the problem is fully solved. what an annoying "feature." Why do they bury it, too?
I'll confirm that this did fix a similar problem for me. I acquainted myself with that setting a few weeks ago after discovering that pairing my DualShock 4 with my BT dongle would always reduce the system volume. It really had me going for a while. I was looking all around my onboard audio settings trying to find a solution when it was Windows' fault all along!
Oh hey, thanks, this was really useful! My audio's seemed really quiet lately (doing a lot of game dev and testing with DS4s) and I noticed that my audio went down earlier today when I connected my DS4.
