Randomly starts/stops/skips tracks when also on discord call

2024-01-24 18:28:27

Issue: Foobar will randomly start (if not playing), stop (if playing), or skip to next track AND start playing, seemingly iff I'm on a discord call. It happens at seemingly random intervals between 10 seconds and 3 minutes apart. It also doesn't appear to be related to any particular keyboard input or voice input.

I'm on a Windows 10 machine, using the latest version (2.1) of fb2k as of this post.

What I've tried so far:

• Made a similar post on discord-related forums.
• Reinstall foobar (in fact, I also tried both the 64 and 32 bit versions, tho ultimately I'd stick with 32 just for some plugins).
• Notably, when trying the 64-bit version, it's a clean install with none of my previous plugins, most notably the discord rich presence plugin, yet the issue persisted.
• Disable all my global hotkeys for foobar
• Disable the Windows universal audio control option in foobar

I'm sure there's many other things to try, but I was hoping either someone else experienced this before and has an answer, or some good ideas about why this might happen that I can try before I just brute force every possible idea I can think of.

Thanks for any help

Re: Randomly starts/stops/skips tracks when also on discord call

Reply #1 – 2024-01-25 10:24:46

No ideas, besides something else to investigate: what are the sound hardware / drivers, any sneaky features there? Any Bluetooth headphones / speakers with playback controls? (Although your step 5 should've ended that possibility)

Re: Randomly starts/stops/skips tracks when also on discord call

Reply #2 – 2024-02-09 00:53:56

I'm using a JDS Element I as my DAC/AMP. I use FlexASIO, but only for audio production, so I think this shouldn't matter. I have no bluetooth devices connected to my machine, and I also don't have any speakers connected to my computer at the moment.  I really can't think of any sneaky features that would be the cause, but the cause is almost certainly a sneaky feature or weird bug of some kind, lol

Since my original post, I've done more testing and found that it's sufficient to only have foobar running with my mic on for the issue to occur.

I also sometimes get the issue just from powering on the mic.

It's an Audio Technica 2020 USB+, which also has a headphone jack, wonder if that could somehow matter. Windows recognizes it as a playback device, so I wonder if it matters in the edge case that's causing foobar to start/stop/skip when powering on.

Re: Randomly starts/stops/skips tracks when also on discord call

Reply #3 – 2024-02-21 18:57:47

Updating with a "solution", because I hate when I find a random forum post from centuries ago only to find no resolution.

In this case, it was my microphone causing the issue. I've switched from the Audio Technica 2020USB+ to a cheaper, random $20 microphone from Amazon to test, and I didn't have any of these issues with this mic. I can screenshare my whole screen, and let my friends listen to audio from Foobar, and I don't get any of the play/stop/skip issue I had with the AT mic.

Still not sure on the exact underlying cause, but it might be the fact that the AT mic has a headphone jack. Maybe Windows really is doing something weird because it can act as a playback device. I'd have to go out of my way to get yet another mic just to test it, but that might not happen unless the sound quality of this $20 mic becomes an issue.

Re: Randomly starts/stops/skips tracks when also on discord call

Reply #4 – 2024-02-22 12:46:26

Always good to post a follow-up. There was another poster recently that had a similar issue using Zoom. Since they might like to know what fixed it here I will tag them - @danielsoft

Re: Randomly starts/stops/skips tracks when also on discord call

Reply #5 – 2024-04-03 17:43:04

@anamorphic Thanks for the mention: I use a headset which combines earphones with microphone: I need to both hear and speak on a Zoom call, but I can order different hardware and maybe this will fix my issue.