Sound crackling / pops / Clicks while playing games and listening to music

I've not seen that before but it's disabled on my system. That might be worth a try.

edit: Weird, now it's showing as Enabled. I don't see a way to change it, either.
edit2: Now it's back to Disabled. I think it's probably system managed.
 
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okay i found a way with a tool to disable it but it didnt really do anything i still get crackles sadly
the friend of mine should be able to do a trace tomorrow
 
okay i might have just figured it out....
i think my pc need a new CPU :)
i ran the intel diagnostics tool while listening to music and when this tool hit the CPUStressW and CPULoad test i could clearly hear the crackles starting.

EDIT: tested the same thing with furmark -> Same result:
when the CPU load is close to 100% i clearly hear the crackling start.

could this be the case ? i mean im tempted to buy a used i7 6700k and just try swapping it
 
okay i think i may need to go to sleep....
i need to rewrite my last message:

i meant GPU not CPU because this intel tool does a GPUStressW and when it gets to that i hear crackling
+ Furmark also makes the audiocrackles appear.
 
I think it's more that the CPU is having trouble keeping up with the demands of the GPU, from what I've seen in the traces. I was under the impression you're using the audio supplied from the motherboard which is processed by the CPU. Is that not the case?
 
Is your computer using the NVIDIA High Definition Audio instead of the Realtek Audio?
 
how would i see that ? can i disable it in my device manager?
do you think a external audio card would fix my problem ?
 
I'm still looking... I'm just trying to make sense of what I'm seeing.

What you wrote about the GPU made me look at the GPU data in the traces and there are some strange things going on with the traces from your system. There's a GPU DMA Operations dataset in XMA and all of your traces only show data for a few hundred milliseconds at the beginning of the trace but then they all abruptly stop. That data set from your friend's trace shows data throughout the trace. I thought it might be something different about a GTX 1080 and a RTX 2070 Super so I tried capturing a trace on a system I have with a GTX 1080 and mine is capturing GPU DMA Operations data throughout the trace, too.

Despite the data no longer being captured for DMA operations, other data about the GPU is still getting captured and it shows one processor on the GPU pegged at 100 percent utilization through almost the entire trace. The following is just one sample point on the graph:
Code: 
Unit 901 of 9699           
Adapter 2 -Node 10 -Engine 1           
Time(ns)    4500000000       
Event Local Time    09:49:28:480.6818 06-29-2022       
Event Time    09:49:28:480.6818 06-29-2022       
CPU    2       
Usage (%)    100

When I hover over the GPU utilization line for that GPU processor it shows a callstack that looks like this along the entire trace:
Code: 
0 / 0
Callstack at time 6735290500 - I/O Priority: Very low - System (PID-4) - Thread-240 (ntoskrnl.exe!ExpWorkerThread) - Write - \C:\$BitMap - Unit:# 1
ntoskrnl.exe!_output_l
ntoskrnl.exe!_vsnprintf_l
ntoskrnl.exe!_vsnprintf
storport.sys!RtlStringCbPrintfA
storport.sys!StorPortDebugPrint
stornvme.sys!NVMeHwAdapterControl
storport.sys!RaCallMiniportAdapterControl
storport.sys!RaidAdapterSendPoFxActiveToMiniport
storport.sys!StorPortAdapterIdleCondition
ntoskrnl.exe!PopFxIdleWorker
ntoskrnl.exe!PopFxIdleComponent
ntoskrnl.exe!PoFxIdleComponent
storport.sys!RaidAdapterPoFxIdleComponent
storport.sys!RaidUnitCompleteRequest
storport.sys!RaidpAdapterRedirectDpcRoutine
ntoskrnl.exe!KiExecuteAllDpcs
ntoskrnl.exe!KiRetireDpcList
ntoskrnl.exe!KiIdleLoop

I don't know why debug information about NVMe storage functions would be getting called as much as they seem to be - pegging that GPU processor at 100 percent. It's such an odd thing it makes me wonder if it's just bad data but all of the traces from your system show the same thing.

The traces from your friend's system and mine don't show anything like that and the GPU utilization for both is less than 30 percent on any GPU processor at most and usually barely registering any utilization for the majority of the time.

I'm not sure what to make of it.
 
hmm that NVMe storage function that you mention makes me remember something:
When i reseted my PC on the 22nd i unplugged all my SATA Harddrives (because i was in fear of deleting something on accident while reinstalling Windows.
but i dont think this has anything to do with that ...
why would it work a few days ...
i ordered a sound card and it will arrive tomorrow.
 
okay so the sound card didnt help. but i have to say quality wise i can only recommend them everything sounds so much better :D
 
It's been a while since I used a dedicated sound card but I do remember the audio quality being much better than the onboard audio at the time. Can you make a 30 second trace with audio glitches with the sound card available for comparison?
 
it seems like the crackles got a bit more silent but i get some weird pops that are pretty loud (louder than before).
also weird is that the crackles only appear if something is played -> when no sound is played i hear no crackles but i can hear the pops every 40-60 seconds.(sometimes longer between pops)
i think 2 of this pops accured while tracing
DESKTOP-EG2SLJO.07-04-2022.19-06-15.zip
 
There's a view in the Scheduler dataset called Thread Priority variation on Time which shows changes in the priority assigned to processes. The older traces show quite a few changes to the audiodg.exe process throughout. The latest trace shows only 4. One at about the 7 second mark, another at second 22.5, another at second 24.5, and a big drop at second 26. Do you recall if that was more or less the pattern to the pops during the latest trace?
 
yes i would say that fits it quit perfectly in the last few seconds i heart quit a few audio glitches and one big pop at the beginning -> may have been the one at 7s i can also recall a big pop around the end -> maybe the one at 26s
 
I've been trying to find explanations about priority drops with audiodg.exe but there doesn't seem to be anything. I think it's something new in Windows 10. My suspicion is that it happens because Windows determines the CPU is too busy and tries to reduce priority on "less important" processes that can preempt other processes. The audiodg.exe process has a priority of 22 normally but will drop to 16 and even as low as 6 (which the latest trace did once at the end.) The older traces were frequently dropping to 16 and going as low as 6 sometimes, too. Priority changes were happening dozens of times in the older traces but only 4 times in the latest.

I'll keep looking and see if I can find a reliable explanation.
 
okay i guess i cant change the priority manually because i tried in task manager and it didnt change anything about the audiodrops ...
i tried to look at the "Analyse wait chain" Button and it said that audiodg.exe is running normally.
i tried the same with forza and saw this ( i dont know it this means anything tbh but ill post it anyways :D)
 

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  • waitchain.png
    waitchain.png
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I wouldn't suggest messing with priority levels. 22 and 16 are already quite high and even 6 is above normal.
 

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