Experiencing low volume when playing audio after periods of silence

I have an Acer Predator XB271HU bmiprz monitor connected over DisplayPort and I've been experiencing low (muted) volume coming from the speakers after periods of silence.

After a period of silence (somewhere around 20 seconds maybe), audio coming from the monitor's speakers is silent for about 2 seconds. It doesn't matter where the sound is coming from (web browser, media player, even the noise Windows makes when adjusting the volume). If I switch my audio device to my headphones, I don't encounter this issue at all. If sound is constantly playing, then I never get the silence.

It seems to be intermittent whether it appears or not, but recently it's been appearing more. Does anyone else experience this issue? I searched but I can't find any mention of the issue in here or the nVidia forums.

My guess is that there is some speaker/audio circuitry that is powering off when not in use. This becomes irritating when I am practicing a language, for example, and have to replay the audio each example because the first half of the voice track is muted.