Audio crackling and popping

I've been chasing my tail on this for a few days now.

I've been getting this on netflix, youtube, spotify etc. but not on local music or video in vlc etc.

Speakers are fine, I get the issue also with headphones connected to pc.

I've updated drivers for audio and video.

Same issue in opera without flash installed as in Edge with flash. All extensions , ad blocking etc disabled.

PC is a new build with nothing changed since building, Ryzen 5 2600 , 16gb Ram and a 1050 ti. Performance should't be an issue nor bandwidth.

I've disabled sound effects ect and changed quality in audio properties.

As I said nothing I can think of has changed and performance isn't an issue as the pc never seems to break a sweat I can be running VM's and Visual Studio and have opera open with multiple tabs and it still won't feel remotely sluggish even with 10gb ram in use and cpu up to maybe 20-30%

The reason I mention performance is there is one oddity which may be just that , every time I open task manager, system interrupts shows at the top using 78% and promptly vanishes to the bottom. I've had issues on other pc's in the past with that and it was driver related, but like I said if it was chewing up that much cpu I'd be hearing the fan's go nuts and definitely see a performance hit especially when I spin up the Virtual Machines.

So any suggestions?

EDIT: Just noticed while I had music playing locally I get the same crackling and distortion while I was downloading a 2mb file. I can reproduce this consistently by doing a speedtest or something. Downloading a file should have no impact on a locally stored and played mp3.

tuxy

Have you it the speaker/headphone pluged into the port on the case or direct into the motherboard at the back?

Try both and see if you have the same problem.

endacl

Shielding.

tuxy

endacl wrote: »

Shielding.

Could be, if that was the issue the motherboard would probably need an RMA.

Only an issue over the last week or so , I've tried both front and rear ports for headphones. Board is a MSI B350.

Out of curiosity I ran what I had available in terms of games. Minecraft UWP and Forza Horizon 4 demo which I'd played for a bit when I built the system and they ran fine then about 5-6 weeks ago on average or recommend settings but like poop with frame rates through the floor even with task manager reporting 30% cpu and 35% memory. Something isn't right there

So I'm thinking my ****ty audio is a symptom of something else. I can run minecraft on my partners laptop which is an i3 with 4gb ram smooth as and task manager isn't something I can rely on for my box.

tuxy

Check DPC latency issues this is one thing known to cause audio problems

https://www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml

tuxy

tuxy wrote: »

Check DPC latency issues this is one thing known to cause audio problems

https://www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml

Thats one I encountered in my searching but hadn't tried. What should I be looking for there? I get all yellow bars under 2000 and this machine should be able to handle real time streaming of audio etc.

tuxy

Deleted User wrote: »

Thats one I encountered in my searching but hadn't tried. What should I be looking for there?

If you download and use dpc checker you will just be looking for high latency on the graph.
Spike will show up in red like this

https://www.thesycon.de/dpclat/dpclat2.jpg

But it won't tell you exactly what's wrong. If it detects a problem then you have a driver or hardware fault. I once manged to fix a dpc problem by figuring out the pci-e wifi card in a system was faulty. So it could be something like that.

tuxy

tuxy wrote: »

If you download and use dpc checker you will just be looking for high latency on the graph.
Spike will show up in red like this

https://www.thesycon.de/dpclat/dpclat2.jpg

But it won't tell you exactly what's wrong. If it detects a problem then you have a driver or hardware fault. I once manged to fix a dpc problem by figuring out the pci-e wifi card in a system was faulty. So it could be something like that.

Got ya. I'll have a nosey at that so.

Had a look using that tool, I'll get red spikes alright if I stream or download something, but not if I run anything else.

So possibly network adaptor?

ED E

You're using wireless yeah?

Its the WLAN chip inducing on the DAC/Preamp. Had it happen before. Certain combos of hardware have it. The Intel WLAN microcard in a Vostro would do it with an external DJing unit I had before but other lappies would be fine.

ED E

ED E wrote: »

You're using wireless yeah?

Its the WLAN chip inducing on the DAC/Preamp. Had it happen before. Certain combos of hardware have it. The Intel WLAN microcard in a Vostro would do it with an external DJing unit I had before but other lappies would be fine.

Yeah ASUS PCI-E wireless card. Think I have a USB one and another pci-e card knocking around somewhere to test that possibility.

You think disabling it in device manager is enough or should I pull the card Ed-E?

tuxy

Disabling it in device manage will work.

Tested with a USB adaptor and it seems to have improved things massively. Still getting choppy video in Netflix but sound is fine now but I've a feeling thats down to me not running flash in Opera, as it's fine in Edge.

tuxy

I don't know if netflix ever used flash.
It was using silderlight until it updated to html5

ED E

If your Mobo's soundcard is that vulnerable, replace that. If two WLAN adapters can induce onto it, its the problem.

I've run latency monitor to see if I can spot anything there.

Wdf01000.sys and ntodkrnl.exe seem to be the top of the list.

Johnboy1951

Might be simpler and cheaper, than changing the motherboard, to add in an audio card and disable the on board audio.
Also a possibility to use a small USB audio dongle which are also quite cheap.

EDIT: Just spotted the two pics above, so maybe the solution is available .....

ozmo

In the BIOS Check SATA drive is in Raid or AHCI mode and not IDE.

I have seen this cause audio issues before

Johnboy1951

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Might be simpler and cheaper, than changing the motherboard, to add in an audio card and disable the on board audio.
Also a possibility to use a small USB audio dongle which are also quite cheap.

EDIT: Just spotted the two pics above, so maybe the solution is available .....

Now this gave me an idea to check something else I haven't tried. Disabled the on board audio and enabled the hdmi audio from my gfx card(not the onboard one). Reason I wouldn't be just doing that anyway is I run a dual monitor set up and use the pc on the left screen when I use xbox on the main one etc. So need audio from both at the same time sometimes. Anyway the sound while going through HDMI was as bad as before I disabled the wireless PCI-E card and switched to a usb one so I switched back.

Going to dig this one up again, I thought I had it sorted but didn't and have been putting up with it as I've been to busy to properly have a look.

As it stands at the minute. Local audio and video, youtube and other online streaming can be fine if i have any audio issue it's normally after a resume from sleep at while point a reboot usually sorts it. If I put the c/gpu under load say load a game then I immediately get crackling and popping in the audio. Is grounding an issue here maybe?

Maybe unrelated but I have noticed from time to time my wireless mouse making a high pitched whining sound. Also if I plug in certain devices a usb 3.0 portable hard drive or xbox one controller in my secondary display will go black and the pc will freeze, while my phone and memory sticks etc will be fine. Doesn't matter which ports are used front or back same issue.

whizbang

can be pointing to poor power supply..
is it a well known brand with all the proper connectors for GPU etc?

try removing Gpu and running onboard (if you have it).
I have issues with Nvidea drivers causing some similar issues.