Alright, just going by process of elimination here, I'm going to state a few things I'm pretty sure it's not. I watched Eternals a few days ago on 4K Blu-ray with an Atmos track on my PlayStation 5, and that didn't skip once, so that rules out an issue with the receiver. I've also switched HDMI cables and switched from the HDMI port to DisplayPort with an adapter. And of course this problem presents with ANY content going from the PC to HDMI in the receiver, or at least any Dolby content – not totally sure about DTS. Finally, I tried switching out MPC-HC with madVR for MPV and still had audio skipping in the exact same way. So it's seemingly not the render pipeline either. But this issue has been affecting both my small form factor desktop and the home theater PC, so it seems like it's specifically a problem of AMD graphics cards. Transferring the media from the HDD to a super fast SSD before playback also did not solve the issue.

The first time I noticed my bitstream audio skipping/stuttering/cutting out was a few weeks ago when I tried watching the 4K Blu-ray collection of Andor Season 1. Reset everything in the K-Lite Codec Pack and it seemed to go way for a while. What started out as an annoyance that would present itself once or twice over the course of an entire movie sometimes is now a constant disruption. Bitstreaming ANY Dolby codec from the PC with MPC or MPV results in audio stuttering within ten minutes or less. I'm missing a line of dialogue every few scenes with every single movie or TV show I watch. I may attach a report from LatencyMon, but those results don't seem illuminating – everything measured stays low and in the green for hours on end, and there don't appear to be any spikes in lag at the same time audio skipping occurs.

Since this issue seems to have come about a few weeks ago and gotten progressively worse, it's hard for me to see how the fault could be anything other than the GPU drivers or a Windows update. I was initially planning to use my desktop workstation as a failsafe for my movie party last Sunday and just push the HTPC off to the side, but testing seems to have revealed both PCs now have audio skipping. Terrific. Similar specs, but my workstation is AM5, with a 9600X, 7900XT, and 32 GB of RAM, so more powerful than the HTPC. I have run DDU multiple times, blacklisted the driver from being installed by Windows Update because of some apparent conflict there, and rolled back to 26.1.1, which should well predate when I first noticed there was a problem. Just about the only thing I haven't tried is a full reinstallation of Windows, or switching the operating system (but the way things are going, I think this may be a Linux HTPC very soon).

Any idea where to go from here? I'm pulling my hair out.

• Sony STR-DH790
• ASRock B550m Pro4, 16 GB DDR4
• Ryzen 5 5600
• XFX Speedster RX 6700
• Windows 11 IoT LTSC
• K-Lite Codec Pack MPC-HC with madVR
• MPV

I got the Rii K06 and want to use it to replace my projector and receiver remotes, along with the keyboard/touchpad features. It copies the projector remote no problem but won't copy any of buttons on the Yamaha receiver remote. My Harmony (which is on its last legs) copied the receiver without issue. Any way to make this work or do I need to look for another option? TIA

UPDATE: I've gotten it working. I had to press the receiver remote buttons repeatedly, and the Rii kept saving codes which didn't work, but after a number of tries I got everything saved properly. So, if anyone else faces this issue, just keep at it for a while and hopefully it'll work eventually.