Windows 11 keeps changing audio output.

I'm sorry, but this is incorrect. You wrote a lot about non compliant devices, or generic devices, or bad drivers but not one of your descriptions actually said how those would cause this issue. The reality is that they're not the cause of this issue.

This behavior is caused by the fact that windows always switches to the most recently connected device. If they disabled that behavior and instead allowed you to actually select and lock in the device you want used this would not happen. Always switching to the most recently connected audio device is a bad behavior when there are tons of peripherals where the audio device is NOT the primary role of that peripheral and you could be connecting it without any desire to use the audio from it.

On top of that, you talk a lot about how you don't buy generic bluetooth devices etc, but I notice you mention nothing about hdmi...which the fact that hdmi has an audio channel and windows is assuming there's an audio device on the other side of the hdmi cable is a big part of the problem that's happening for users here. Heck, in my case the primary reason I'm getting repeated switches is due to an authentic lenovo dock.

How re-assuring. While every product during the past 10 years promotes customize anything to what the customer wants. Windows has devolved in the opposite direction... Simply put.

Bumping this again.

Bluetooth was enabled and paired to my TV's speaker. No indication of this other than a jumpscare.

I still use a KVM switch to make sure my regular audio device stays as is.

Please fix.

Disabled should mean disabled. That's all. I don't know what the heck happened to this thread.

If I disable a device in the device manager, settings and everything else, it should not be randomly enabled. If I turn off bluetooth, it should not enable and pair itself with a speaker without permission.

Off should be off. No task or policy will help as a workaround for now.

When I show hidden devices I see pretty much what I expected, like 20 instances for my monitors.

it looks to me like every time the monitor is connected (say on reboot or if I have to move them around or just because my dock glitched for a second) it's detecting it as a new audio device and retaining that. I suspect each time this happens it switches output to the device.

Really, I think we just need a windows setting to tell it to not automatically switch input to the most recently connected device. If this were given as an option it should entirely solve the problem I think.