Realtek, Windows 7 64RTM Crackle/static/popping

Hi All,

When playing audio on my Windows 7 64bit RTM using my onboard Realtek ALC888 I get those weird popping/static/grating noises every 30 seconds or so.
When actively using the computer the problem intensifies.
I've installed numerous versions of the Realtek official Windows 7 64bit drivers - no improvement.

After scouring the Internet, I've also tried messing around with the HPET setting in the BIOS (setting it to 32bit/64bit/disabled) - again, no improvement.

I've also went through the posts in this forum, while some people post pretty similar problems, I saw no conclusive solutions - if at all.

Let me state that otherwise, everything appears to be in excellent working order, all devices are recognized, the speakers are correctly recognized in the "Sound" AND the "Realtek HD Audio Manager" Control Panel applets.

This is slowly driving me nuts as you can imagine - listening to music and getting a loud "Crack!" all the time is, to put it mildly, annoying.

Any help/hint/pointer/advise will be greatly appreciated!

Many Thanks
LZ

do u keep ur modem or mobile beside or close to ur woofer or speaker????

scorpionking said:

do u keep ur modem or mobile beside or close to ur woofer or speaker????

No that type of crackle (I'm - and I guess we - all too familiar with it).

But to just to reply to the question - no phones in the vicinity when this happens.

Another note - this NEVER happened with the previous installation of Windows XP on the same machine.

Is this one of the High Definition Realtek onboards? If yes they just released a new driver for Windows 7: http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/...&GetDown=false

i think this might be ur harware problem now

HellsDelight said:

Is this one of the High Definition Realtek onboards? If yes they just released a new driver for Windows 7: Realtek

Thanks HD,
I'm already using 2.31

scorpionking said:

i think this might be ur harware problem now

That's not really relevant, or helpful...

Dwarf said:

Hi locozozi,

Are you overclocking your system? If so, reset it to stock (default) settings and see if the problem persists. One thing that does need to be pointed out is that W7 is still relatively new (it isn't even released in the retail channels yet), and as such hardware manufacturers are still developing drivers and ironing out bugs. In order to do this, they need user feedback. Don't forget that XP has been out for 8yrs and that many, if not all, of the problems have been sorted.

Hi Dwarf,
No, I'm not OCing my rig - and if I was, that was the first things I would have looked for ;-)

I'm well aware of the newness of Windows 7 vs the maturity of Windows XP, but I've managed to find many references (check out some of the responses) of the same issues with Vista, apparently MS redesigned how Audio is working in Vista onwards (the idea was externalizing Audio functionality from the kernel - purportedly to increase stability) - that's why I was looking at HPET as the culprit.

So... still crackle & crack...

P.S.
For background sake's - I've been running NT machines since NT3.1.

Running 7 x64 on an HP laptop with
Device Mgr:
ATI HD Sound Device
Sigma Tel HD Audio Codec

It's an HDX 9000, I think uses JBL with a tiny sub ... anyway not sure if this helps but


I would always get the popping and crackling. Fortunately REBOOTING cures it for awhile, but after a full day it's usually right back to popping again.

I'm having the exact same problem. Since the latest High Definition Realtek drivers there seems to be less popping but it's still not completely fixed. Tried several older drivers in vain.