Editor uses CPU time in the background due to the audio server being kept active

[davidhudson]

Godot version

3.4 Stable

System information

Windows 11 / Surface Pro 8 / i7 x86_64

Issue description

Having the editor open but minimised / unfocused eats up 1-2 hours of battery life. Cause seems to be continuous use of Windows Audio Device Graph Isolation. Desktop Window Manager usage is also much higher than when the editor is closed.

This can also be seen by running powercfg /requests in the terminal.

SYSTEM:
[DRIVER] Realtek High Definition Audio(SST) (INTELAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0274&SUBSYS_10EC122E&REV_1000\5&1543d6b8&0&0001)
An audio stream is currently in use.

Sometimes, but not consistently this also prevents sleep when closing the keyboard cover.

Might be analogous to these issues affecting MacOS:
#28039
#38154

Maybe this is a minor issue in the grand scheme of things, but usability is impacted when you have to keep opening and closing a project when you don't expect to work on it for even a hour less you sacrifice some battery!

Steps to reproduce

Open the editor

Minimal reproduction project

No response

[Calinou]

As a workaround, start the editor with the --audio-driver Dummy command line argument. This will prevent audio playback from working in the editor, but it should still work in the running project as it's a separate process.

See also #38208, which fixes this issue in the project manager (but not the editor).

Until something like #45948 is implemented on all platforms, we could add an editor setting to use the Dummy audio driver when editing any project. This way, you don't have to always specify the command line argument anymore.