Pulling out my hair on this sound issue

[eslader 1,783]

Hi everyone. There are lots of threads about my issue all over the internet, and they all die out without providing solutions. Maybe the folks at Avsim can do better!

Short version: Win10. Headphones (Steelseries 7x) were working great. Then I upgraded the video card and CPU. Now they click and pop constantly any time media is playing, and sometimes even drop out entirely for a second or two. Gets worse when videos are played (either Youtube or when a game runs a video (non-realtime rendered) cutscene. 

 

 

Long version: Original computer specs: AMD 2700x cpu, Asus Rog Strix X470F-Gaming motherboard, 32g ram, 1080Ti (also Asus Rog Strix). Had Blackshark v2 headphones that clicked and popped all the time. They were junk in other ways so I replaced them with the Steelseries 7x. Sound instantly cleaned up - no pops or any other audio artifacts.

Then I upgraded to a 3070Ti. Headphones still worked great. A couple weeks later I swapped in a 5800X3D cpu. The headphones immediately started clicking and popping, and every minute or so, beeping as they drop in and out. This only happens on the headphones. If I run VR (Reverb G2) the sound is perfect. 

Ran latencymon and saw nvlddmkm.sys and wdf01000.sys were having issues. Google research shows this can be caused by an improperly-seated video card, but if that were the case it should have happened when I upgraded the video card, and not two weeks later when I upgraded the CPU (I did not unplug the vid card to install the new CPU). 

I tried removing the nvidia graphics drivers with DDU, then booted into Windows with the network cable unplugged, which caused Windows to install the basic display driver. Still had clicking and popping, so it doesn't seem likely to be the nvidia driver even though that's a commonly-cited cause of audio latency issues. I do not run the GeForce Experience junk which I've seen has been blamed for latency issues as well.

All of the AMD motherboard/chipset/etc drivers are up to date. I'm running the latest nvidia driver, but have also tried going back to 511.79, which seems to be the one people have the least trouble with, but that didn't fix anything. BIOS is up to date (it had to be updated just to recognize the new chip). I've disabled every sound device except the headphones in the sound options panel.

I've got the high performance power plan running with minimum processor state set to 100%, and disabled USB selective suspend..  At this point I'm getting close to deciding it's time to just nuke the install and start fresh, but for obvious reasons I'm reluctant to do that. It'll take me an entire day just to get MSFS back up and running, much less all the other stuff installed so if it's at all possible I'd like to avoid it.

 

 

Here's the real fun: My wife just upgraded her computer - it has the exact same specs and even brands mine has, but she's not getting any audio issues on her wireless headphones. So I have trouble suspecting the hardware.

 

So what do you all think? Where should I be looking?

And if you do think I should just do a full reinstall, what's the consensus - stick with 10, or move to 11?

Thanks in advance!

 

 

Edited March 14, 2023 by eslader

[IanHarrison 522]

Is this resolved or still ongoing?

 

[tesza 2]

I recently bought the Craetive G6 which has now ben connected to my usb dac port and sound issues (cracking etc) are now a thing of past.

I also disabled onboard sound through the bios.

Although this G6 dac works very well delivering 7 channel surround sound to my corsair headphones, (also removed corsair software), I think any good quality dac is an improvement on the motherboard sound chip.

Regards

[jannickz 0]

Does it solved?