Fix: LG Bluetooth Speaker Connects But No Sound on Windows 11 (AVRCP Registry Fix)
If your LG Bluetooth speaker or soundbar has stopped producing sound on Windows 11 despite pairing perfectly, you're not alone - many users have fallen victim to this frustrating issue after upgrading from Windows 10. The problem often lies in the device's negotiation with Windows 11, specifically with the AVRCP registry and the Bluetooth services advertised during pairing. By making a simple registry tweak, you can resolve the issue and get your speaker working again, as outlined in this step-by-step guide.
If you've upgraded an older PC to Windows 11 and suddenly your Bluetooth speaker or soundbar pairs perfectly fine — shows "Connected" right there in Settings — but produces absolutely no sound, this post is for you. I went through this exact nightmare with an LG Sound Plate soundbar (an older Bluetooth 2.1 device) and spent a long time chasing it down. Here's what was actually going on, what didn't work, and what finally got it stable.
The symptom
After upgrading to Windows 11, my LG Sound Plate would connect without any errors — it showed up as "Connected" under Settings → Bluetooth & devices, and even under Sound → Playback devices it appeared in the list. But no audio ever came out of it. Not a crackle, not a blip — nothing.
To rule out a hardware fault, I tried:
A separate Bluetooth 5.0 USB dongle as an alternate radio — same result, so it wasn't the PC's built-in Bluetooth adapter
A different, newer Bluetooth speaker (a Soundcore Boom 2) on the same PC — that one worked perfectly, which ruled out Windows' Bluetooth stack being broken across the board
That combination was the key clue: the problem wasn't the PC, the radio, or Windows Bluetooth in general — it was something specific to how this particular older speaker was negotiating with Windows 11.
What didn't work
Before landing on the actual fix, I burned time on the usual suspects — if you're in this situation, you've probably already tried most of these too:
Removing and re-pairing the device from scratch
Restarting the Windows Audio and Windows Audio Endpoint Builder services
Setting the speaker as the default playback device manually
Unchecking "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" on the Bluetooth adapter in Device Manager
Disabling and re-enabling the Bluetooth audio device node
Rolling back / updating the Bluetooth adapter driver
None of it made a difference. Digging deeper with pnputil /enum-devices, I found the actual root cause: my LG Sound Plate only ever advertises the Bluetooth service 0000110B (A2DP source) during pairing, and never 0000110A (A2DP sink) — which is the service Windows needs to actually create a playback audio endpoint for the device. The Soundcore Boom 2 advertises both, which is why it worked fine. Windows 10's older Bluetooth Audio stack was apparently lenient enough to tolerate this on the LG unit; Windows 11's rewritten stack is not.
The fix that actually worked
The fix that got audio working — and has now held up through a full reboot without dropping out — was a registry change combined with a full system restart (not just a re-pair, and not just restarting services):
Press Win + R, type
regedit, and hit Enter (accept the UAC prompt).Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Bluetooth\Audio\AVRCP\CTFind the value named DisableAbsoluteVolume. If it doesn't exist, create it as a DWORD (32-bit).
Set its value to 1.
Close the registry editor and do a full restart of the PC — not sleep, not just re-pairing the device. A full shutdown-and-boot cycle.
This key disables absolute volume control over AVRCP, which is a known compatibility fix for older devices that implement the AVRCP 1.3 spec (as this ~2011-13-era LG Sound Plate does). On its own, re-pairing or toggling the device after setting this key didn't do anything — it only took effect after a genuine restart.
Why the restart matters
If you've read other threads about this issue, you'll see a lot of people say "I rebooted and it just started working," without really explaining why. In my case, live troubleshooting — re-pairing, disabling/re-enabling the device, restarting just the audio services — never once fixed it on its own. It consistently needed a full cold restart to clear out whatever stale Bluetooth stack state was preventing the A2DP sink endpoint from being created. Combined with the AVRCP registry key above, that's the combination that got it to stick.
If you're still stuck
If you've set the registry key, done a full restart, and it's still not working, here are the next things worth trying, roughly in order of effort:
Double-check the device isn't set to let Windows turn it off to save power (Device Manager → your Bluetooth adapter → Power Management tab)
Check Event Viewer under Applications and Services Logs → Microsoft → Windows → Bluetooth-Policy/Operational for connection-level errors
As a fallback that sidesteps Windows' Bluetooth audio stack entirely: plug the soundbar into your PC via optical or AUX cable, or use a small Bluetooth audio transmitter into its optical/AUX input
Older Bluetooth audio gear paired with Windows 11's rewritten Bluetooth stack is a rougher combination than it should be. If your device is old enough to only speak A2DP source instead of sink, this registry fix plus a full restart is the combination that finally worked for me.
