Team Fortress 2 on Steam Deck freezes when activating voice chat

[LennyMcLennington]

Problem can be reproduced by installing TF2 on a Steam Deck running SteamOS and trying to use the in-game voice chat or the 'Test Microphone' button in the voice settings.

Your voice will be transmitted fine after the freezing stops, but every time you start talking it will freeze the game for some time. For me it would freeze for up to a second.

If it's tested in Desktop Mode of the Steam Deck, then when you activate voice you'll probably see some popup related to the audio device changing or something like that? Not sure exactly what the popup indicates, or whether it's related to the game freezing, but it says the name of the audio device. Here's an example:

That popup will show up whenever you talk, so I figured maybe it was related.

[rabscootle]

Would your audio also make a really awful popping sound when you tried using it? I've had that happen alongside the freezes.

[LennyMcLennington]

Would your audio also make a really awful popping sound when you tried using it? I've had that happen alongside the freezes.

No, but sometimes popping and crackling sounds just start happening randomly for me in SteamOS in general and rebooting usually fixes it. I haven't experienced it with this issue or even with TF2 at all though.

[rabscootle]

Interesting, maybe it's a handheld mode issue that's exacerbated by Steam Input; You seem to be playing on Desktop in that img.

[LennyMcLennington]

Interesting, maybe it's a handheld mode issue that's exacerbated by Steam Input; You seem to be playing on Desktop in that img.

I tested it in Desktop mode for troubleshooting purposes only, the experience was the same in both Desktop Mode and Gaming Mode, other than the "Raven/Raven2/FireFlight/Renoir Audio Processor Speaker" popup. There wasn't really anything visual to show in Gaming Mode so I didn't screenshot it.

Also, I'm not sure what you mean when you say maybe it's exacerbated by Steam input. What do you mean by that?

[rabscootle]

Interesting, maybe it's a handheld mode issue that's exacerbated by Steam Input; You seem to be playing on Desktop in that img.

I tested it in Desktop mode for troubleshooting purposes only, the experience was the same in both Desktop Mode and Gaming Mode, other than the "Raven/Raven2/FireFlight/Renoir Audio Processor Speaker" popup. There wasn't really anything visual to show in Gaming Mode so I didn't screenshot it.

Also, I'm not sure what you mean when you say maybe it's exacerbated by Steam input. What do you mean by that?

Ahh disregard my replies then. I wasn't sure if the audio popping/crackling when attempting to use voice chat was possibly a bug in Handheld mode caused by the controller input software the Deck uses (steam input)

[LennyMcLennington]

Alright, I'm pretty sure desktop Steam still has Steam Input anyway, so if there was a problem caused by Steam Input I'd expect it to also happen in desktop mode.