You have may have a monitor that support speakers, a Nvidia card with audio support, and an audio card installed. Normally, this would not cause any issues. But Star Citizen may be crashing due to conflicting audio settings.
To check for Nvidia audio and monitor settings, check the Nvidia Control Panel:
- Open the NVIDIA Control Panel. You can right-click your desktop to open, or use a File Manager and navigate to C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\Control Panel Client\, then run nvcplui.exe.
- Click Display > Set up digital audio.
- The screen displays any detected and configured Nvidia audio and the associated monitor.
- You can try disabling the Nvidia audio in this screen and launching the game.
If you continue to have issues, you may need to try the following options.
To change the default device, configure the following:
- In the Nvidia Control Panel, click Open Windows Sound settings. Or right-click on your speaker icon in the Windows task bar.
- Select Playback Devices.
- Right-click on the Monitor with speakers and Nvidia driver. Select Set as Default Device. Disable the other options. Click Ok. The following is an example.
- Launch the game. If it runs without crashing, you can change the audio Playback settings to your audio card.
You may also want to remove the Nvidia audio driver if you don't plan on using it.
- Depending on your Windows version, open Uninstall Programs or Add and Remove Programs.
- Uninstall the NVIDIA HD Audio driver. It is not mandatory unless you depend on HDMI Audio output.