Hi Lois H. Thank you for your reply!
I followed the instructions as listed here and my results were mixed.
- I no longer have to reboot the NUC (model DC53427HYE) to get sound to come back, but I do have to right click the speaker icon in the notification area (lower right of the screen in the Desktop) and open Playback Devices. When I do that, it seems to re-scan and find my receiver (Denon AVR-789). Strangely enough, every time I do this, another instance of the Denon shows up. Since your post I have tested the issue 2 times, and I now have 3 "Denon AVR" devices listed in Playback Devices. It doesn't seem to affect playback, however, since audio works fine. If I reboot with my receiver turned on, it's detected normally and shows up in only one instance.
- A dealbreaker is that I am currently using my NUC with XBMC. The current drivers have a known graphical corruption issue as discussed here: https://communities.intel.com/thread/38686?start=0&tstart=0
- The graphical corruption issue can be resolved by installing the latest beta drivers, but that's what I was running when I had this audio device problem in the first place. It's like I have to pick my poison: graphical corruption in XBMC or having to reboot to get sound after the receiver is put into standby.
- I also see sound output, even from stereo sources like MP3 files, played out as 7.1 sound.
Thank you again for your reply. I will keep tinkering and trying different settings to see if I can get this problem fixed. Of course, a new driver release is also welcome.
Message was edited by: DugKing I wanted to edit and be more specific with the first bullet point. While I don't have to reboot, I do have to still interact and open the Playback Devices window in order to get the NUC to see the receiver again. Less of a hassle than rebooting, but still not ideal. Since I use a remote for most of my interaction, I don't always want to have to go to the mouse/keyboard in order to toggle the audio back on. Another thing I am going to try is keeping the official audio driver installed, as was linked above by Lois H, but update the video driver to the beta version. Since the beta driver download comes in a zip rather than executable, I can swap out only the video driver. This will hopefully fix the issue of video corruption mentioned in the second bullet point. It will also, hopefully, keep me from having to reboot, albeit still having to right click the speaker icon in the notification center.