Realtek, Windows 7 64RTM Crackle/static/popping

[anonimuz]

Fixed for me

Just bought a new Dell ZinoHD to replace my older dell pentium D, mainly because of crackling audio through the optical output. (older sound card, no new drivers) Get my new PC set up and EXACTLY THE SAME PROBLEM!

Figured it was the new Denon amp or something... Nope. Update Dell drivers. not fixed. Tried everything on this thread, no luck.

Turns out there is a new driver from realtek that was released a few weeks ago. (not on the Dell site yet - still over a year old) Installed it and BAM, works flawlessly. Hopefully this fix works for others!

 

[paulc]

I had realtek audio stuttering problems for over 2 years with the 64bit Win7. I had to reboot my PC at least 3 times a day, because on my Acer desktop PC whenever the audio stuttering started it severely degraded video performance as well, and it sometimes led to blue screens if I forgot to reboot. I literally tried everything including different realtek drivers, modded drivers, disabling other hardware, cards, etc. and nothing helped. I agree it's pathetic and a shame Microsoft doesn't care that the OS clearly has a serious bug with the way it handles audio.

I finally gave up and formatted my hard drive, then fresh installed the 32bit Win7 OS, and luckily I have not noticed any audio problems for 2 months now. My advice after fresh installing the 32bit Win7 OS is not to install any drivers from realtek, stay with the basic microsoft audio driver that installs stock with the 32bit Win7, and refuse any driver update if Windows Update offers it.

I'm also convinced the problem is with Win7x64 and not realtek and there is no real cure except going back to Win7 32bit or Vista.

 

[Ichinenjuu]

Are you sure? Many people have updated drivers, had it work for a day or two, and then had it go right back to the problem.

 

[paulc]

Are you sure? Many people have updated drivers, had it work for a day or two, and then had it go right back to the problem.

I erased the Win7x64 OS and installed the 32bit Win7 OS fresh and just run the old stock driver alone and it worked wonders.

 

[Ichinenjuu]

You're lucky. I tried that on the Sony to no avail. I'm starting to think the problem I had goes beyond what's in this thread. What I had was a slight cracking/squeaking sound every time the computer did something. Scrolling, opening a program, even the hard drive being accessed. Everything was accompanied by a little sound. I installed every "fix", updated drivers, tried old drivers, even installed the preview version of Windows 8. Same problem every. single. time. And that's why I gave up. Good to see some people got it fixed, though.

 

[Customizor]

My Issue Fixed

My issue was having crackling occur when listening to audio via music/games whatever, not from cpu activity by scrolling in sites or whatever.
A post from someone in this topic on a random page i clicked said to deactivate the motherboard software which scans cpu temp/volt/useage etc.
for me on my Asus Rampage III Formula this was Asus AI suite.
Right clicking the small Icon in the task tray and clicking Exit closed the program and wow it has gone... and to think i was going to buy a new soundcard!!

I gave up for a couple months and just used my VGA sound output from my monitor audio out. but was unable to use all the cool features my motherboard gave. so i tried searching again and finally! a random click out of hundreds of pages i managed to find my answer!

 

[Paladin77]

Fix

Well I have been facing the same issue for ages with my MSI VX600 laptop. Only driver that ever worked was the realtek 2.48 until I was able to fix by modding some files and replacing them in the latest realtek driver. Here are the steps:

1. Download the latest Realtek driver from Realtek website or your computer vendor and extract it.
2. Download the fix: http://www.mediafire.com/?ai7npcmce7s9dw1
3. Merge the Vista and Vista64 folders in the fix with ones in the drivers folder (accepting the prompts to replace the files where appropriate).
4. Install the driver (Please note that digital signature will be gone with this mod so accept the prompt to install the unsigned driver).
5. Reboot and the crackles should be gone.

Regards
Paladin77

 

[smegoid]

Having the same crackling problem with onboard realtek HD audio. Spend the last few hours going through the 50+ pages on this forum and still no luck... My specs:

Intel E7200 @ 2.53GHz
Biostar TP43D2-A7
6GB SDRAM DDR2
Realtek ALC662 6-Channel HD Audio


My problem:
Intermittent spiking (two or three red bars in DPClat.exe) about every 10-20 seconds. Otherwise all in the green. This seems different than the low level latency spiking that I've seen others post in this forum. Mine is all green with intermittent MASSIVE spiking (off the charts in DPClat).

Things I've tried:
-Previous realtek drivers (pre win7, e.g. R222) as well as various custom drivers (e.g.5898_PG281_VISTA_TurnOff_PullMode_Upd)
-Uninstalled all Biostar hardware monitoring software
-Using DPC latency util went through and disable hardware.
-Disabled real-time anti-virus. Cut a ton of services and background applications
-Checked to see if it was tied to GPU throttling (as per a previous post)

Basically tried everything I've seen posted to no avail. For what it's worth I've noticed something interesting that might help others and that I haven't seen discussed yet.
In the latency monitor utility (this one Resplendence Software - LatencyMon: DPC, ISR and pagefault execution monitor not the DPClat) I'm seeing intermittent huge bursts in kernel timer latency that correspond with the audio crackle. The DPC execution time, on the other hand, is mostly fine. I wonder if perhaps DPClat isn't the ideal tool as the DPC spikes there might just be the result of some other problem with kernel timing. Unfortunately, I don't know what kernel timer latency is caused by or what it really means (all my searches turn up linux, and the people who make latency monitor don't say anything about it on their webpage).

Anyone else run latency mon and noticed the kernel timer latency spiking (about 33000 us)???

Cheers.

 

[rogerm]

I have been able to eliminate for now at least the problems with latency I was having.

The following information should help you too:

Before I continue, the best way to pinpoint latency problems is with LatencyMon as mentioned in the previous post, as it tells you what is causing the issues unlike DPC Latency Checker (which is still a useful tool though).

This is what I did:

I disabled Aero, and also animation when minimizing and maximizing windows. In device manager I have disabled all the Intel USB Universal Host Controller entries (although the links I provide below suggest just disabling power management for them which I will try). This reduced most of the red spikes shown in DPC Latency Checker. I also disabled Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery too (this should ideally be enabled again after you're done using audio software).

The end result was no more red spikes. When I maximize and minimize windows, I still get some red spikes but I am not getting any noticeable glitches in audio playback. With Aero enabled and animations for minimizing and maximizing windows enabled this was a big issue.

According to LatencyMon I am having latency issues from ACPI.SYS which in theory should not happen with Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery disabled in device manager, but still disabling it did make a difference to latency.


Here are some useful links for optimizing Windows 7 for audio use:

Windows 7 Tuning Tips for audio processing

Optimize Your Windows PC for DJing & Music Production w/ DJ Endo | Dubspot Blog



What I presume is the case, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is that high latency may not be anywhere near as much as a problem for other sound chips, and could be fixed by Realtek with better drivers.

 

[DarXide]

My Story

Occurrence
Was working perfectly fine until a water spill into my computer fried the mobo, GPU, and PSU. Got a new PSU and mobo, and that's when the crackling and popping began... being incredibly severe on 720p and higher movies and mild/bearable with music, youtube etc

Specifications:
Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4ghz
GIGABYTE GA-G31M-S2L (old mobo)
GIGABYTE GA-G31M-ES2L (new mobo)
4GB DDR2 RAM

So far I:
Tried out random theories in this thread
Tried a bunch of fixes in this thread
Ran latency checking crap
Formatted + fresh W7 Ultimate x64 install
Tested audio with no drivers
Tested audio with upto date drivers
Bought a soundcard

My remaining options:
Reinstall Windows Ultimate x86
Buy a new mother****ingboard
Nuke the planet

 

[DarXide]

Well, W7 x86 installation didn't fix it either.

This really looks like a hardware problem now

 

[dnevill]

Solved!

Like NM89, I was able to solve this problem using the DPC Latency Checker others have mentioned (downloaded from DPC Latency Checker). In my case it was my PCI wireless adapter causing the latency.

Lots of people here have solved this problem by enabling or disabling different programs since we all have a Windows 7 driver issue causing this, but using that latency tool should track down which device it is (instead of manually trying every individual solution other folks have tried.)

 

[afig23]

I'm having the same problem, except mine is so bad there is no use in listening to music/Watching Videos I tried using the latency checker the post above me linked to, but I could not solve the problem. On the latency checker the max latency is 74485 microseconds. Adjusting a device (even if you enable it again) helps space out the lag time a bit, but it comes back to steady clipping soon.

 

[speedfreek]

I ran DPC as well to figure out the issue and as it turns out, it's the wireless network adaptor on my laptop. It wouldn't be so much of an issue if I didn't need to use it but being a laptop, I kinda do =/

Well at home I don't have internet other than tethering my phone to it until it's back up and running at least but regardless it still is a pain and i can't really snake an ethernet cable across the house either.

 

[Glennovich]

If you have IAANTmon.exe running on your computer; try and disable that completely. That worked for me and I never had the issue afterwards.

 

[Willp789]

If your still having problems you could try a usb audio card and plug in heaphones and that might work temporarily...

 

[Kelekele]

I have Win7 32bit and Motherboard ep-45-ds3p with Realtek audio card (integrated). It was Gigabyte Energy Saver. Now i remove it and the cracking disappear (my english is bad ). I also have ET6, and when i start it there is NO cracking sound. It was definitely stupid Energy Saver. Works for me.

I hope it was helpful (and understanding)

 

[emaulana]

For ASUS notebook owners with realtek HD who have audio crackling problem, i think the source of problem is not realtek driver. Try to uninstall sonic master and ASUS Asio, i think that software is "the devil" , mine has solved by unistall it.

 

[greygirl]

I have a brand new Vaio S Series and spent about the last day and a half trying to figure out this problem... The crackling was apparent just about all the time: from startup to minor Windows-related tasks like adjusting the volume or browsing documents. The noises wre most apparent while using headphones. Using iTunes DID NOT result in crackling though, so it is probably a graphics or sound problem related to Windows.

I found that doing a Rollback of Realtek got rid of the crackling. I had updated it, and I assume the update was wonky or I didn't download a version compatible with my specific laptop. For now sound is working fine for me, but if crackling returns, I will do a follow-up post.

Thank you to others on this thread who also gave advice about rolling back devices through Device Manager. That's how I got the idea.

 

[greygirl]

Nevermind. Still doesn't work