Windows 7: Intermittent popping/crackling noise during audio playback

Hi Everyone:

I have a Sony Vaio VPCL23CFX All-in-one desktop computer (See my SPECS).

I have an odd problem that I cannot seem to resolve. When I play a song, any song, or any MUSIC, for that matter, I get a popping/crackling noise every once in a while. Sometimes it won't happen for a minute, then it will happen every 5 or 10 seconds and then it will stop, then it will start back up again with the every 10 seconds and then not for a minute thing.

It NEVER happens when no music is playing, for example, during a movie when there is no soundtrack playing or if I am watching a Youtube video that has no music. I get the same popping/crackling noise whether it is though the computer speakers or through the headphones.

Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this to happen or how I might get it to stop?

Thanks,

T

Popping and crackling, if you look over the old posts here, is a frequent issue. Unfortunately there is no "one fix" for the problem.

Among many potential issues, sound drivers (make sure you have the correct sound driver from Sony), video drivers, Wi-Fi, power supply, external source such as a wireless phone or cell phone close by.

On the audio, if you only have the generic Windows installed "HD Audio Codec" that is the first place to start. Get the correct sound driver. What you list for the Sound Card is not really what it is, correct designation is "RealTek", according to the Sony site.

Thanks for the info. I finally figured out what was causing the problem. It was my Atheros Wireless Network Adapter. Once I disabled it, no more popping/crackling.

T

The Wi-Fi as I mentioned was one potential cause.

hi - was just starting to also troubleshoot this issue over here and this was my first thread in my google search...so, i disabled it at my end and it wouldnt connect via wifi afterwards.....i just started using a router for the first time and never had this issue with connection via a wireless modem...

so, i disabled the generic ethernet controller instead and while i still can connect to the net i still have same noise (audio crackling) issue...am i missing something? i am trying to update drivers to adapter - Atheros AR500EG - but searching forever online with no return software to update..any other ideas would be greatly appreciated

i am running Vista though...shouldnt make any diff , right?

i will try to figure out in interim and check back - thanks in advance for any reply

I know that it is a very old thread but since I know that there is still a LOT of people out there suffering with this plague here we go.

There is some time since I posted here for the last time. The problem still haunted me for a long time and I was convinced that the only solution for me would be to set up a dedicated system for play music (based on a thin PC running Linux or XP) but then today I bumped with this article pointing a few "methods" that supposedly could solve the DPC latency issue...

Fix: High DPC Latency on Windows 10 - Appuals.com

I confess that I am completely skeptical about any of those online solutions since I have tried a LOT of them and nothing seemed to cause any positive effect. However, what wrong could happened? So I decided to give it a shot.

The two suggested methods I tried on my computer (and that I didn't find so far in any of the other articles) were the mentioned in the topics number 3 (disable the Energy Efficient Ethernet on my network adapter) and number 7 (Disable the TCP/IPv6).

OK, after to apply both onto my system, I am still not 100% sure that it will solve my issue for good, but so far it seemed to have made a HUGE difference. Oddly the Resplendence Latency Monitor still says that my system may suffer with somewhat high execution time of a couple DPC routines (in my case the culprits are USBPORT.SYS and TCPIP.SYS) regardless the graphic red bars looks too much smaller than before.

What really matters is that in this right moment I am typing in this post I am performing a download using the totality of my bandwidth through WiFi while I am listening to a mp3 album and guess what: NO ONE dropout, click or pop.



I will keep monitoring the computer behavior and will report if I consider that it solved (or not) my problem definitively. I hope that it helps someone else.