So I have gone into Device Manager and disabled everything sound-related apart from my USB headset.  I've now done 2 flights with no pauses and no sound issues.  It's too early to tell if it's a fix or a fluke, I'll report back after a few more flights to see if it's really gone.

Fly towards the Los Angeles area, and start panning around and see what happens and report back

Not sure. Seems to be very intermittent for me. Has not happened since pre SU1 (beta) in fact until about a week ago. Then it went away. Not sure what it is related to. GSX objects? PG data? TLOD?

On 4/16/2025 at 10:18 PM, Bill A said:

Fly towards the Los Angeles area, and start panning around and see what happens and report back

So after a few days of testing, I've done multiple flights on multiple aircraft.  The sound stutter has completely gone for me.  I flew the INI A350 low level over Los Angeles, and whilst my frame rate took a small hit as expected, I didn't get any stutters or hitches.

On 4/14/2025 at 5:22 AM, Ixoye said:

Have you tried an external DAC? I use headphones with an external DAC/AMP and have never had any sound problems.

On 4/14/2025 at 12:54 PM, Maxis said:

External DAC user here .. No issues with sound in sim. But then again i'm also one of those windows 10 holdouts.

I'm starting to wonder if going to a dedicated sound card (internal or external) would solve the problem. The annoying part is that the sound drops also cause stuttering; probably some kind of disconnect/reconnect going on that causes the system to 'think' for a second.

No, it was happening with the internal sounds, so got an external Sound Blaster card and the issue is still there. 

30 minutes ago, Bill A said:

No, it was happening with the internal sounds, so got an external Sound Blaster card and the issue is still there. 

Oh man, bummer. Which one did you get? It seems to happen only while using msfs both 20 & 24. 

This stutters and sound popping is only a 24 thing ,never happens with 2020

Out of curiosity, are you guys using display port or hdmi 2.1?

I'm on display ports

6 hours ago, Bill A said:

This stutters and sound popping is only a 24 thing ,never happens with 2020

Actually I had it happening in 2020 and 2024. 

Picked up a sound blaster x5 and while I haven’t tested extensively, there were no sound issues or fps stutters associated with the sound problems. Just a quick flight from ORBX KVNY-KSBA in the Duke with SI & SI Traffic. A bit pricey, but it’s nice that it’s external (connects via usb) and it can run optical out. Only tried FS20, but will try 24 tomorrow and report back. Another thing I did yesterday was turn off “windows dynamic boost” for the program in process lasso. That appeared to help with sound issues at first, but then earlier today the snap, crackle, and pops were back…less frequent, but there. 

This is a software issue and nothing to do with hardware. LA region has always suffered from audio crackles and pops and I suspect it's to do with the sim downloading and loading PG into the sim. Try flying a heavy PG region and you'll get the audio stutters, non-PG areas have no issues whatsoever. In 2020, I've haven't had any audio issues and I'm running ultra with TLOD 400.

I also suspect why the team isn't having the same issue is they're likely not streaming the data like the rest of us.

The issue definitely related to sound settings in MSFS Sounds options and other settings on your PC.

1 Make sure the same exact choice is chosen for both speakers and microphone in MSFS Sounds options page. Otherwise, sound popping is very likely.

2 Go to windows control panel and disable any sounds generator that you never use. Like for instance Nvidia sounds or your monitor sounds driver (if you never use them).

3 While you are there in control panel, check which default sound driver has been selected for Windows.

4 A sound card won't change anything. But when you install it, you may be doing 1 or 2 or 3 while installing, which makes you think that it was the new sound card which has cured the issue. But actually, a new sound card probably has the same issues as the built in sound driver.

(For me, 1 is the most likely culprit when this issue arises).

Edited April 22, 20251 yr by Fielder

I found a fix for me on my pc. I have a 9800x3d,4080, 64 gb cl30 ram. I found this from someone playing spider man with the 9800x3d and a 4080.

Tweaks:

1. Go to Windows Security->Virus and Threat Protection-

›Manage Settings->Turn off Tamper Protection

1. Go to search box and type 'core isolation'. Turn off EVERYTHING and reboot system.
2. Go to BIOS and disable AMD Virtualization stuff. There are 2 things that you need to disable:

1. SVM (This will disable virtualization)
2. IOMMU (This will disable Hyper V word not allowed……………
3. Turn minimum cpu state to 100% inside of the windows power options.
4. This made my performance a lot better and was barely getting audio pops anymore. The final piece was disabling HAGS in windows and not using any frame gen in MSFS 2024. I’m getting 55-60 fps in most add on airports in the fenix and it’s smooth as butter. I can spam whatever camera views I have now. In the a350 which was causing me the biggest audio pops and stutters I can get about 40 fps on the ground in inibuilds klax and it’s pretty smooth. I’m fine with it but if you want extra frames get lossless scaling. I tried it and it works just fine but I don’t think I even need it. I’d rather cut my frames in half and have perfect audio all day and that’s what this has done for me. I went a whole day of flying intensely without an issue and I’m tired of changing things so I’m sticking with this. I hope this helps someone else also!