SPDIF Keep Alive utility (spdif-ka)

Windows-based .net GUI application used for keeping the S/PDIF connection alive when no sound is playing.

Some sound cards will stop the S/PDIF link when no sound is actively being played. When a sound is eventually played, there is roughly a 500ms delay in reconnecting the link thereby causing some audio sounds to be missed or a perceived cutoff of sound. By running spdif-ka, this problem no longer ocurres.

How to workaround the issue

This utility plays a mono-channel WAV file which contains no sound. This tricks the sounds card and/or Windows mixer into opening the audio connection to the receiver/DAC via the S/PDIF link. With this tool running, you will no longer have a delay.

Known issues

• If you use utilities like foobar200 with a WASAPI plugin, you may encounter some strange behaviour with this tool.

Tested platforms

• At this time, spdif-ka has been tested under Windows 8.1 64-bit, Windows 10 64-bit using the .net framework 4.5.

Ways to help

• Fix bugs, add features. Fix an open issue on this repo. This spdif-ka utility is an Open Source Project. Please contribute by recommend enhancements, writing code, testing, fixing bugs, etc.