So I just got a new computer with Windows 10, and I took it for a test drive with recording a short passage and editing with the newest version of Audacity (2.1.3). However, when I try to play back the audio I’ve recorded to see how it sounds after I’ve deleted something or added an effect, I’ve noticed that the audio won’t play immediately; there’s just silence the first few seconds and then the audio suddenly cuts back in. Then I have to click play/or click the quickplay twice more before it’ll finally play back the audio from the beginning without that silence. I uninstalled 2.1.3 and installed the version I was using on my old computer with Windows 7 (2.0.2) but there’s still the same issue. It also only happens when I’m wearing headphones, but I’ve made sure to uncheck the Software Playthrough option under Transport and I’m still having this issue. I do audiobook work and this is really frustrating my editing process and I’m not sure what to do at this point.
there’s just silence the first few seconds and then the audio suddenly cuts back in.
Is the timeline cursor moving and playback is silent for the first few seconds, or does everything halt until it gets good and ready to play normally?
What kind of headphones do you have?
How are you reading for audiobooks? microphone, interface, model numbers?
I just got a new computer with Windows 10
What was the old one?
Koz
I’m just reading through that again. If you have a good quality USB interface system, you should make sure you have the Windows 10 compliant drivers for it. Just “OK for Widows” doesn’t do it any more.
Koz
Is the timeline cursor moving and playback is silent for the first few seconds, or does everything halt until it gets good and ready to play normally?
Yes, the cursor is moving and you can see the levels moving with the volume in the top right, but there’s just no sound. Clicking play again makes the silent shorter, but again, takes a while for the sound to kick in. The third click is when everything plays from the beginning. (Getting real sick of double clicking every time I get silence)
I…did not keep any of the boxes/instruction manuals for the headphones and microphone, sorry. I’ve had them for several years at this point and neither of them have the model numbers on them. The mic is a Logitech USB mic, and the headphones are in ear headphones from Sony. It’s definitely not an issue with the mic, because the actual audio is fine. It’s just the delay in playback that’s killing me. And the headphones just go in the headphone jack, there’s no drivers needed to make it work, so 
It also only happens when I’m wearing headphones
That’s from your first post. Really, the sound plays just fine in the built-in speakers?
It’s sometimes valuable to list everything in the sound system. Pre-judging the solution is very dangerous.
What else could be trying to use the sound system? Do you have Skype, GChat or any other communication, conference or sound service? Games?
Have you tried to cold restart your computer? Shift-Shutdown should shutdown and close all the processes and services. Regular Shutdown may not do that.
Koz
That’s from your first post. Really, the sound plays just fine in the built-in speakers?
Yes. When I was originally google-ing the problem to see if anyone had been having the same issues or if Audacity had ever addressed it in a FAQ, the closest thing I saw to what I was experiencing was posts about a delay in live playback. It was said that it was a latency issue that’s common because sound takes time to get to the headphones, for which Audacity recommended turning off “Software Playthrough” (the answer is #5 in the Table of Contents FAQ:Recording - Troubleshooting - Audacity Manual). Which is when I tried clicking around and playing random parts of the audio without the headphones in. No issue with delay in playback. Once I put the headphones back in, delays up the wazoo.
What else could be trying to use the sound system? Do you have Skype, GChat or any other communication, conference or sound service? Games?
Have you tried to cold restart your computer? Shift-Shutdown should shutdown and close all the processes and services. Regular Shutdown may not do that.
I’m not currently running Skype or anything else that could use sound aside from Audacity. But honestly, this is Windows 10, which is big on voice-activated software (like Cortana, but I turned off pretty much everything to do with that) and I’m sure there’s a ton of processes running in the background. I’m hesitant to start closing down processes mostly because I’m not sure what most of them even do and I don’t want to mess with anything that might be essential to running the computer. But I can try a restart and see what happens.
After restarting I was still having the same issues, but then I went into the headphone settings just to see if there was anything that could be tinkered with that might help. I enabled Windows Sonic under Spatial sound in properties and that seems to have helped?? I’ve been clicking around in random audio files and veeeery occasionally the delay will happen but for the most part it’s playing back audio fine with and without headphones. I don’t really understand why enabling surround sound is helping, it might be something else entirely, but I’m not going to question this too hard. I will accept this boon from the tech gods and take the W. It’s working for now, that’s all I care about.
Machine Latency is the time your sound takes to get into the machine from your microphone and then come back out again. It’s not the difference between pressing play and having the sound come out…and it doesn’t change with key press event as your does.
Thousands of years ago I used to have tricks where I would look at machine or drive activity when I had troubles. If the machine needed to pause or delay, I would see the activity skyrocket as it found it needed to think about something really hard. Then I needed to find the app or service hogging the time.
Macs have an Activity Monitor app and that still works. I have no idea what Win10 has.
Koz