Why was the comment from nonevogama deleted?
The above audio and video problems traced to broken wire(s)/bad joint(s)/failed in-cable driver(s) in the "tether" cable, and thermal drift in the headset DisplayPort balanced signal receiver(s). Replacing the "tether" cable fixed the problem. Details: The "tether" cable is of poor design and very difficult to test/diagnose. It contains multiple shielded balanced twisted pairs using very fine wire and encapsulated active receiver/driver chips/transistors to force the high frequency signals through long poorly matched transmission lines. If one side of a balance pair fails the received signal becomes half-amplitude. Due apparently to capacitor coupling the receiver manages to deal with the poor signal until its reference voltage drifts too far due to headset receiver chips heating up.
Note that the next headset uses WiFi in place of the "tether" cable removing these problems.
One hopes that there are less WiFi problems.
proton hotfixx1 2026-07
SteamRuntimeSysInfo.txt
Describe the bug
This may be two different bugs. Valve Index + Nvidia graphics + Xubuntu 24.04 on VRChat or Resonite. Primary bug: Within 5 to 10 minutes of starting play on VRChat, headset audio blanks for a few seconds, then recovers. After a couple of minutes it blanks again and recovers. This gets more and more frequent. Secondary bug: After 10 to 15 minutes of playing the headset video goes blank (The PC screen video stays good). Headset video is recoverable by pushing the headset (reset?) button and waiting about 10 seconds then clicking Return To Game. This bug also repeats more and more frequently. Sometimes it recovers on its own. At all times the PC monitor screen shows good video.
To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 with 4.6.0 Nvidea 580.159.03 (Also fails on 530).
Power on Index headset, lighthouses, controllers.
Peripherals panel appears, shows all running. Put on Headset, click on VRChat.
Secondary bug: After 10 or more minutes the video goes blank but is recoverable by pushing the headset (reset?) button and waiting about 10 seconds then clicking Return To Game.
Also tested on Resonite - audio problem is the same. Was not tested for long, video was OK during the short test.
Also tested on same hardware but Windows10 OS. The audio worked fine - never blanked but after 10 minutes the headset video became very corrupted, multiple stacked images and RGB separation.
Expected behavior
One expects VRChat to to run with good audio and video, and for several years, up to Feb or March 2026 this hardware + software system did work well.
**System Information:
Steam client version:
Steam Beta Branch: Stable Client
Steam Version: 1782866176
Steam Client Build Date: Wed, Jun 24, 2026 4:24 PM UTC -08:00
SteamVR version:
App ID: 250820
Build ID: 23899461
Installed content updated: July 4, 2026 at 11.16 AM
Distribution:
Xubuntu 24.04.4
Steam runtime diagnostics:
see "SteamRuntimeSysInfo.txt" attached
Steam and SteamVR logs:
see "steam-logs.tar.gz" attached
Minidumps:
see "steam-minidumps.tar.gz" attached
Screenshots
Problem is not visible in screenshot.
Additional context
VRChat:
Compatability Proton HotFix (also 10.0-4 same problem. 11.0 (Beta) fails to run)
Game V and B Default Public
Things checked to date: Checked system audio rates - always 48000;
Headset Cable - bending/moving headset cable and connectors has no effect.
steam-minidumps.tar.gz
steam-logs.tar.gz
SteamRuntimeSysInfo.txt