Can we also talk about how Win11 just randomly drops audio for no reason after even a brief period of silence, then takes some random amount of time to start playing sound again? I'd say it was a problem with my home theater/gaming rig, but it happens on my work machine too.
Sounds like the audio device going to sleep during periods of silence, then taking a short time to wake up again when audio is played. Maybe to avoid hiss?
For a data point of 1, my laptop does this regardless of OS.