Audio crackling/pops DRIVING ME CRAZY. Please help.

[Cookieeater]

Alright. Brand new spanking system. Asrock P55 Extreme, i5 760, Sli gtx 460s. Everything is perfectly fine except for this HORRIBLY annoying audio crackling/popping that occurs constantly. So, I begin to take steps in order to see what could possibly be wrong with my computer. First off, I download DPC latency checker. It shows me that every now and then that I get an absolutely insane absolute maximum of about 100,000 or something, which means that something is probably messed up badly with the drivers. I was like, no problem I'll just try to find the problem. Well I pretty much tried disabling a bunch of things and it still messed up all the time. I also got sound pops/crackles that DID not show up on thee DPC latency checker. I then said all right, maybe the integrated sound card sucks. I also had downloaded up to date drivers for the realtek at this time. I then decided to test my brother's Asus Xonar D1 in my computer, the stuttering was still apparent!!!. I also flashed my motherboard to the latest bios. All my setting in bios right now are at default. I then decide to use a live CD of linux mint, and there was no stuttering/pops present which made me rule out the possibility of the motherboard being screwed up. I then decide to do a totally fresh install of windows 7 64 bit and the first thing I do is go to youtube/install flash player/ play a music video and the stuttering/popping is still present! I've installed the audio drivers/ lan driver/inf driver/ jmicron sata2 driver on asrock's web site and the stuttering is still present. I've tried disabling one of my videocards in sli and that didn't fix it either. I went and made sure that none of my connections were loose on my motherboard. I'm at a loss for words here, and I'm just frustrated with this issue. Sorry for the rant, but I'm quite frustrated with this. Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

[pjmelect]

The causes of cracking popping are different to stuttering. Stuttering could be caused by a background task taking up the entire processing power. look in task manager when playing an audio file for any task taking a large amount of processing power when the stuttering occurs. Cracking and popping are caused by something else altogether, make sure that the audio volume control on the task bar is at its maximum setting and that the mixer controls are also at the maximum settings then turn down the volume control on the speakers to your preferred setting.

 

[jsphdickens]

This sounds kind of similar to a problem I just had. I can't tell you why, by the culprit ended up being my PCI wireless card. My audio was skipping and sounding garbled from my onboard sound as well as the the HDMI out of my videocard, and the onboard sound on another motherboard I went out and bought. After reinstalling windows, replacing my motherboard, and days of running every diagnostic test I could think of, I ended up pulling my Linksys wireless card out and the problem was totally fixed. Weirdest problem I've ever had.

If you haven't already, remove any hardware that isn't completely necessary. If the problem is still there, try your video cards and memory sticks one at a time to see if the problem lies with them.