Feature request: Improve NVDA performance with sound cards

[harun-342]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please explain.

NVDA is slowing down significantly on Ultrabooks due to the sound card sleeping.

Explain your desired solution

Is there a feature that would allow NVDA to keep the sound card awake as long as NVDA is open? NVDA's ability to keep the sound cards open does not help with this issue.

Explain your alternatives

If necessary, Microsoft should be contacted to make them aware of this issue.

Additional context

[josephsl]

Hi, this is more of a sound card driver setting/issue, more so if the issue also happens with Narrator. If it does happen with Narrator as well, then the next step would be tweaking power management settings in the sound card driver. Thanks.

[harun-342]

@josephsl
Hello, yes, this is an issue caused by the sound card driver, but screen readers are seriously affected by this. I don't know what other screen readers do, but even if this is due to the sound card driver, I think it would be good if NVDA could provide a solution to this issue. Also, if you could provide more details about where the setting you mentioned is, we would have more information about whether or not a solution can be produced for this issue. Thank you.

[Adriani90]

There is a hidden setting called white noise in your nvda.ini in apodata/roaming in user config. You can enable background white noise which should force your sound card to stay awake.

[harun-342]

@Adriani90
Hello, to be honest, I don't know English very well, I searched for the setting you mentioned with the translation but I couldn't find it. If you tell me exactly which line it is in the NVDA.ini file, I can find it, thank you.

[RuturajL]

@Adriani90 , would you be refering to this thing perhaps?
Press NVDA+ctrl+U to open NVDA Audio settings. Then, tab to Time to keep audio device awake after speech (seconds) edit.
Here, perhaps set it to something like thousand, and the issue should be unnoticible.

[harun-342]

@RuturajL
If that's what's meant, then unfortunately it doesn't solve the problem. That's why I felt the need to request a new feature.

[wmhn1872265132]

Please add the following to the next line of the [audio] line of your nvda.ini configuration file:
whiteNoiseVolume = 10
Please note that the values ​​can be set at will from 0 to 100 according to your preferences

[harun-342]

@wmhn1872265132
Hello, thank you for the information. But unfortunately this does not solve my problem. The best option to overcome this problem is to turn off the signal enhancement setting of my driver. Even that does not completely solve the problem, at least it provides a partial improvement. I think I will overcome this problem with a headset with a Type-c connection.

[Adriani90]

I was refering to what @wmhn1872265132 described.
So if whitenoise doesn't help, then it is really a tricky case.
Even if this was possible to solve in NVDA itself, I think the downside would be that you get less running time when on batery, especially very relevant for Laptops. So this should ideally be solved in Sound card's drivers instead of NVDA. Do you notice this issue also when changing your energy plan to best performance or so?

[harun-342]

@Adriani90
I didn't want to increase the performance settings of my computer, I think it will make my computer hotter and the fans will scream. I don't want that to happen. If there is a solution on the NVDA side, I don't know what else can be done, because even playing silence and white noise doesn't increase the responsiveness of my sound card. So I don't know what else can be done to prevent the sound card from constantly triggering and falling asleep. I don't care about the battery, if disabling signal enhancements doesn't improve the situation a bit and you have to use it in a worse state, I don't think you will think about the battery at all. Because the responsiveness of my sound card is exactly like this, I press the arrow keys to read something, or any key that requires NVDA to respond, even if NVDA responds instantly, I can hear it 1 second later. Can you imagine how slow this would make your computer feel?

[ABuffEr]

Hi @harun-342,
some things you can try:

1. use Silenzio (direct link, the site is not to easy to navigate);
2. instead of increasing performance, decrease/disable the energy saving on USB or PCI Express, according to your configuration, from advanced energy settings;
3. going to device manager, search your sound card/headphones (you can find a couple of items in different categories), and open properties; then see if there are advanced options related to energy saving;
4. try these two tweaks (instructions under second header of level 1).

[harun-342]

@ABuffEr
Is it possible to add the changes made in the registry to NVDA, that is, what if NVDA added these values ​​to the registry when it was installed?

[josephsl]

Hi,

Okay, some things don't add up:

• Which NVDA version did you install on this ultrabook?
• What is the Windows version you have?
• What is the speeh synthesizer you have?
• Any add-ons?

Also, does it make a difference if you try NVDA 2025.1 beta 8?

Thanks.

[harun-342]

@josephsl
I'm on the latest version of Windows 11 24 H2. I'm using NVDA 2024.4.2. I don't use any plugins. I'm using eSpeak NG as the synthesizer. Using the beta doesn't solve this problem. What comes to my mind is to add the registry change made by the bat file suggested by @ABuffEr to NVDA's core. Is this possible, i.e. what if NVDA changes the registry entries that prevent the sound card from sleeping when it's installed?

[harun-342]

The registry changes suggested here didn't fix my problem either. Unfortunately, even if this could be added to NVDA, it wouldn't help me.

[seanbudd]

This is not an actionable ticket - converting to a discussion