That is truly amazing about disabling sound when not in focus. I just did it and sat on the Main Menu street for quite some time and it didn't FREEZE LOL!!!!! I didn't get the chance to play it yet, but honestly, it would normally use SSD to 100% and freeze, no sound, even in the menu screen. So that is a very positive sign that it fixed it. I'll know more once I start a new game (new update, a big one), and see if it still does it during gameplay, but I'm super hopeful. Just for the record, even AFTER the big update today, I went into the game (before I did what you suggested) and sure enough, it just froze, no sound for about 10 seconds or so in the main menu. I came on here and saw I had some replies to by question, and did what you said, and no FREEZING laugh. So huge thank you for that and Merry Christmas laugh!