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Comment by nsxwolf | Hacker News Reader

There's also a lot of little things. Like, you launch a game and there's no audio. Well, Windows at some point decided to switch audio outputs on you. You may have a lot of them. Line out, headphones, a bluetooth headset, a virtual out for streaming software, a monitor with built-in speakers - and now you've got to click the little speaker icon and try to figure out what should be selected, which may be named after the driver or hardware vendor and not totally obvious.

That's the sort of thing that for the most part just doesn't happen with the consoles, because they're limited and tuned for the intended experience.

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On my PC each legitimate output device has a duplicate with the same name that does nothing. Every once in a while when I launch a game it will switch to the duplicate entry and I will have to switch it back. It's a quirk where the fix has become a reflex.

I've never had to deal with this on any console I've owned.

Disabling all the duplicate entries might help.

Or not. Shrug. Sound configuration is one of worst aspects of Windows.

I remember it being pretty good on Windows XP. I’d run programs like reaper with full control of my soundcard and it’s IO. It wasn’t until win10 that everything sound related became a chore. I can still find snippets of XP UI in win10 hidden under many layers of new age UX. Stuff like the “listen to this device” checkbox

> Well, Windows at some point decided to switch audio outputs on you. You may have a lot of them. Line out, headphones, a bluetooth headset, a virtual out for streaming software, a monitor with built-in speakers

I agree that I have found that problems. I just get the same problems with my TV (Samsung) when I have several audio devices. Maybe one can argue that is a TV problem, not a console problem. But non-portable consoles need a TV to work. So, the problem exists but it's moved somewhere else.

After your comment I realize that portable consoles are that ideal all-in-one, at least older ones without HDMI or Bluetooth.

You can rename audio devices to be something just friendly.

Right. You can. A workaround. This is something you don't have to do on an XBox or PS5.

And that's a workaround to make it easier to perform another workaround, the "why can't I hear my game" problem. So we're in workaround Inception now, nested workarounds.

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