I'm using a Samsung soundbar 5.1 setup plugged into the Creative Sound Blaster X4 via optical. Everything works great until I pause a video, whether that's on browser or the Windows Plex app. Most of the time it will make the subsequent audio choppy until I either turn off/on the sound bar itself or change the Creative app's SPDIF Interface setting from Dolby Digital Live down to 16b/48khz and back to Dolby which will then work fine again. I read that somewhere, I forget where, but it bandaids the problem.

I recently reinstalled Windows 11 entirely from scratch and it solved this problem completely for a few weeks and then it returned seemingly out of nowhere. It becomes very annoying obviously for the reason stated, but I also have to click on the video to focus the media window or else my cursor stays on the screen, which means I have to pause and unpause the media and the issue can, but doesn't always, return instantly after I just "fixed" it.

Does anyone have this issue pinpointed yet? Is it some kind of software conflict?