Audio crackling/stuttering on Windows 7, latency problems

Steam · 24 May 2014

Several months ago, my computer started to have audio problems. Or at least that's when I started to notice it. Rebooting was a temporary fix, but it would gradually get worse and worse the longer my computer stayed on, starting with minor popping and crackling before eventually getting all the way up to stuttering.

For a while I thought it was a problem with the laptop itself rather than software or driver problems, but yesterday I started to think outside the box and have made some progress, but not enough to solve the problem. LatencyMon's gone a long way in helping me isolate the problem, but I just don't know where to go from there. Running LM always will show ndis.sys and tcip.sys at the top of the list, and but I'm not quite sure what to do now. I even went on the Acer website (my laptop's an Acer V5-571) and downloaded and re-installed all the drivers there but all that's seemed to fix is reduce ndis.sys to .697-ish ms. Tcpip is still over 1 ms.

Be forewarned although I use my computer a lot for writing and playing games, I don't really consider myself tech-savvy so if advice could be explained in as simple of rudimentary steps as possible (meaning where to go to find pretty much anything or how to get certain information or reports from my computer posted up here) I would greatly appreciate it.

fireberd · 24 May 2014

The Audio Crackling and stuttering can have many causes. Unfortunately there is no "one fix" for the problem. Latency Mon can help, if you can understand what it is telling your. I use my main PC for my recording studio and I tried Latency Mon on my recording PC, that had no problems, just to look at the program and it flagged several problems so I'm leery of what it reports.

There is an other program, DPC Latency checker which may also help but it doesn't go deep into the PC like Latency mon.

Some general items that have been known to cause the crackling/popping/stuttering are sound and video drivers. Wi-Fi is another known cause. As you have a laptop, temporarily disable Wi-Fi and see if changes anything.

Stuttering can also be caused by the higher priority device that is sharing the same IRQ (Interrupt) as the Sound. Windows treats Sound as a "low priority" device and is on the same (shared) IRQ with a higher priority device. The higher priority device can "interrupt" the sound device and thus cause stuttering.

Look through the many posts, here, on the subject. Maybe something will pop out that will help.

Steam · 25 May 2014

And now my computer's crashing all the freaking time. I got the DriverUpdate program after I saw it got decent enough reviews on cnet and the like, I ran it and started updating the "ancient" drivers I had, and now my computer keeps crashing. It seems to behave itself until my computer up and crashed. And now that's all it does. I boot it upand it's like as soon as I try to type something, I get a bluescreen of death about how "Driver IRQL not less or equal to zero" or something like that.

This is just a load of crap. I go, ask for help, try to find something that LOOKS like it'll work and then HERPDERPDERPDERPDERP HOPE YOU LIKE BEING PUNISHED FOR TRYING TO FIND A SOLUATION!

fireberd · 25 May 2014

Many of the "driver update" type programs are crap and as you have found out can install old and unneeded drivers.

Try a System Restore back to an available date before you ran the driver program. That may help.

You can also go to the Device Manager and for each driver you "updated" you rollback the driver to the previously installed version.

Steam · 29 Jun 2014

Back. Been a while but I think I'm narrowing down the problem but I still don't know what'll be the thing that fixes the problem.

The issue is with the driver for my Qualcomm Atheros AR5BWB222 Wireless Network Adapter. When it's disabled, my audio runs perfectly, even if my computer'd previously been running long enough to start the audio problems.

However, the problem's persisted even when I installed the oldest version of the driver for it on Acer's website (previously I'd been using the newest version). The problem could be from another driver connected to the Adapter's, but I don't really know and was hoping this information would be useful in the hands of someone who knew more about this than me.

fireberd · 30 Jun 2014

Wi-Fi is one of the prime causes of the problem. If drivers don't fix or minimize it, not sure what to do.

Steam · 30 Jun 2014

Well, I was hoping that I could completely, entirely re-install the driver after uninstalling it. It might've just gotten corrupted at some point, so I've since uninstalled the driver entirely and am working to re-install it and have my computer recognize it.

If not, there's always a system restore.

fireberd · 30 Jun 2014

One thing to try. Go to the Device Manager, RIGHT click on the entry for the Wi-Fi adapter and then LEFT click "Uninstall". ALSO, check the box to uninstall the driver. Restart the PC and when Windows starts it will detect and install a driver, which may or may not be a generic driver. If this happens, check to see how it works. If Windows can't find a driver then you will have to install the driver you have.