Crackling/distortion in all audio playback

Bees

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 24, 2011
Messages
1,208
I've had sound issues that become prevalent when watching a YouTube video, however games and music playback also have a noticeable distortion.

What I am experiencing is a crackling/distortion during sound playback in essentially everything. Sometimes it isn't noticeable, but then it occurs in the next sound playback. I was using the standard Realtek drivers associated with my motherboard for Windows 10, then stopped trying to use them when they got stuck in an installation loop. Changed my Power Options in Windows to High Performance, as per some info I found through Google-Fu. My main sound output went (motherboard) optical out > receiver; tried connecting some headphones to the front and rear headers of the PC, had the same distortions. So that eliminates a hardware issue.

Got so annoyed with it, not only did a reinstall of Windows, but I got an inexpensive ASUS DGX sound card. Now connected from (sound card) optical > receiver. Sound still has distortion. Headphones through PC header still produces the same distortion.

Installed the card, worked fine for some time, then the issue came back. Found the issue would alleviate with a reboot - nope. Tried uninstalling/reinstalling ASUS drivers. Nope.

Here's LatencyMon running during YouTube video playback:
40f4e1def1.PNG


In gaming, I'll get a warning message from LatencyMon stating a very high latency. Latency would be fine, if the distortion wasn't so distracting - it's similar to a robotic sound or voice of someone trying to talk underwater. Completely takes away from the experience.

Running Win 10 1607, build 14393.693.
 
Specs in sig. CPU currently not OC'd. Sound card is ASUS DGX

Edit: Just uninstalled ASUS drivers, installed Realtek ones. Same corruption.

Edit 2: General Windows drivers have digital audio set after uninstalling Realtek drivers. Sound corruption from them as well.

Thinking of installing Win 7 in another partition and seeing what happens.
 
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Ended up using recovery options to "reset pc" in Windows options. Garbage that it came to that.
 
So that got it fixed?
Yes and no.

Distortion did not occur originally, then heard a bit after a short period of time. Played with bit-rate settings a bit, have not had any issues since then...

However, a byproduct of the reset function seems to be overall system sluggishness, so I'm going to perform a fresh install when I get an opportunity this weekend. I'm quite certain this is a Windows 10 issue, and not hardware: The issue had not occurred with this hardware (sans sound card) with Windows 7. The exact same distortion occurs from multiple output devices using different drivers (driver sweeping occurred, of course), and is remedied for quite some time after Windows installation. Some quick Googling will also find similar issues from other users, with various solutions. Frustrating, to say the least.
 
I'm not sure what it is now, especially since I've freshly installed Windows. It's seemingly getting worse. This is crazy.
 
Download MSIutil and set your videocard to use MSI type interrupts. Reboot.
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=378044
(2nd link from bottom of 1st post)

If you havent installed the Intel RST drivers for your hard drives, do that as well as it will then automatically use MSI for that.
Do NOT set them to MSI manually, or your soundcard (yet).

ps try resetting your CMOS as well.
 
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Download MSIutil and set your videocard to use MSI type interrupts. Reboot.
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=378044
(2nd link from bottom of 1st post)

If you havent installed the Intel RST drivers for your hard drives, do that as well as it will then automatically use MSI for that.
Do NOT set them to MSI manually, or your soundcard (yet).

ps try resetting your CMOS as well.
Will try these when I can boot. For whatever reason I'm getting extremely high temps on my CPU. Going to attempt a reseating. Oh, Windows for whatever reason decided to install RealTek drivers, even though I turned off automatic driver installation. Dammit, Microsoft.
 
Your problem could be related to the CPU throttling.
 
That's what I was thinking as well. I'm uncertain to how long this overheating has occurred, so what I will attempt is replacing the H100i with a different cooler and see what happens. Luckily I've got a few extra air coolers sitting around.
 
Neat. Anyone have any extra LGA 115X standoff screws that's compatible with an H100i?

Found out the H100i was purchased NIB in December 2013 from a user here, so that likely will not cover it under Corsair's warranty policy. Dang. Not sure how to test one of these for failure (seems like it's failure) so oh well I guess?
 

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