Audio Driver Seems To Cause Video Playback Problems

[gobacktogo]

hey,

i hope this is the right forum.

since today i started having issues with videos not playing correctly.

VLC: whenever i start a video, there is a delay for a few seconds where i only see the first frame of the video, after that audio crackles, then it plays normally.

twitch.tv via firefox: streams run at <0.1 frames per second. no audio. will not fix itself. if i open VLC and play a video, suddenly the stream works fine, even after closing VLC.

twitch.tv via chrome canary: stream is frozen for a few seconds in the beginning, then runs fine.

Youtube in firefox: video does not play right away, although the loading bar is far ahead. then audio crackling, then video runs. if i skip ahead or back, freezes happen and audio crackles.

my specs: motherboard Z170A GAMING M5, nvidia geforce gtx 1060, 16gb ram, windows 10

no hardware changes or driver updates prior to the problem occurring.

after the issues started, i updated all kinds of drivers. i narrowed it down to an audio driver issue, because the problem did not occur when using an old USB headset instead of my usual headset that is connected to the onboard sound. tried different realtek drivers, all of them had the same issue. completely uninstalling realtek drivers and letting windows install its default drivers fixes the issue BUT comes with the problem that my mic is extremely low. also it picks up lots of static which was not that much of a problem with the realtek drivers and nahimic (a piece of shit software that MSI basically forces you to use) installed. with those installed, my mic worked okish, was loud enough and did not pick up much static.

seems like i am atm stuck between having a terrible microphone or having major issues with all kinds of videos not playing correctly.

does anyone have any idea what i could try to fix the issue? tried 2 different realtek drivers so far, they all had the same issue.

 

[jojesa]

Have you try disabling all audio enhancements?

 

[gobacktogo]

Have you try disabling all audio enhancements?

there is no such thing for me. realtek drivers for MSI motherboards kinda outsourced all those enhancements to a software called nahimic.

 

[jojesa]

It does not matter if "...MSI outsourced it..." to another company. That is even worse, since you have 3 audio settings to deal with (Realtek, Nahimic & Windows) .
You could still disable enhancements, since these very ‘enhancements’ can cause problems with audio and sound on WIndows 10.
You could access the Nahimic audio software and disable all enhancements and there is also enhancements in the Sound Control Panel on Windows 10.

To disable it on Windows sound.
Search for ‘Sound’ and select Sound Control Panel item from the list.
The Sound properties box will open. Under the Playback tab, right-click the Default Device – Speakers/Headphones and select Properties.
In the Speakers Properties box which opens, switch to the Enhancements tab, select the Disable all enhancements check box.
Try to play audio and see.

 

[gobacktogo]

It does not matter if "...MSI outsourced it..." to another company.

as i tried to explain, the realtek drivers provided by MSI do not include such an enhancement tab.

 

[jojesa]

as i tried to explain, the realtek drivers provided by MSI do not include such an enhancement tab.

Yes I got that. But you did not say if you disable it on Windows sound.

 

[gobacktogo]

In the Speakers Properties box which opens, switch to the Enhancements tab, select the Disable all enhancements check box.
Try to play audio and see.

with any realtek driver that seems to cause this issue, there is no such enhancement tab in the speaker properties. disabling enhancements in nahimic did not resolve the issue.

 

[jojesa]

Besides Realtek, I have seen this issue with Asus, Creative, etc.

When you updated the audio drivers, did you installed the whole package using the exe file?
Have you tried removing the audio drivers and manually updating the drives in the Device Manager?

Also try disabling hardware acceleration on Firefox and Chrome
-Firefox
Click the menu button and select Options
Under Performance, deselect 'Use hardware acceleration when available' (you may need to deselect 'Use recommended performance settings' before hand).
Restart Firefox and see if the problems persist.

-Google Chrome
Click the menu button and select Settings
Scroll down and click Advance.
Under System, switch off 'Use hardware acceleration when available'.
Restart Google Chrome.

Also, you could disable or reduce the hardware acceleration in Windows 10.

 

[gobacktogo]

i decided on buying an external soundcard. turns out, the exact same thing happens: windows first installed its default driver for the card. everything was fine. then i installed the drivers that came with the card and the exact same issues happen: audio generally is crackling/distorted/delayed, twitch streams have very low fps and no sound, videos in vlc start out freezing and with crackling sound.

 

[jojesa]

Did you disable the on-board sound in the BIOS?
If you did then go to the sound device in Device Manager and rollback the drivers.
If everything was fine with the Windows drivers then you should keep those drivers.
There could be other drivers, software or setting creating an incompatibility.

 

[gobacktogo]

Did you disable the on-board sound in the BIOS?
If you did then go to the sound device in Device Manager and rollback the drivers.
If everything was fine with the Windows drivers then you should keep those drivers.
There could be other drivers, software or setting creating an incompatibility.

i had indeed disable the onboard sound via bios after receiving the external soundcard. i had not removed the onbord sound drivers though. did so now. then installed the external soundcard's drivers again for testing purposes. issues still persist. removed them again.

after that i used latencymon to see if it finds anything, both with the soundcards drivers and the windows default driver. and while latencymon itself says that everything is fine, i noticed that 3 drivers show very high ISR counts: wdf01000.sys , ndis.sys and dxgkrnl.sys. had it run for, idk, 15 minutes(?) and those counts were between 100k and 300k. no other drivers showed ISR counts. quick google told me "Wdf01000.sys is a component of Microsoft's Windows Driver Frameworks". i dont really know what any of this means but do you think this could be related? those ISR counts both happened with the drivers causing issues and the default one though.

thanks again

 

[jojesa]

...after that i used latencymon to see if it finds anything, both with the soundcards drivers and the windows default driver. and while latencymon itself says that everything is fine, i noticed that 3 drivers show very high ISR counts: wdf01000.sys , ndis.sys and dxgkrnl.sys. had it run for, idk, 15 minutes(?) and those counts were between 100k and 300k. no other drivers showed ISR counts. quick google told me "Wdf01000.sys is a component of Microsoft's Windows Driver Frameworks". i dont really know what any of this means but do you think this could be related? those ISR counts both happened with the drivers causing issues and the default one though.

thanks again

It is a little high but those are not sound drivers (there are part of Windows framework) so it isn't likely the cause. By the way I have seen higher ISR counts without issues. I start to pay attention above 400K.

I had a similar issue with Creative Sound Blaster drivers when Windows 10 was released.
I used drivers from Microsoft Update Catalog.
You will have to get the device hardware id in Device Manager.
-In the Device Manager, right-click the device, and select Properties in the popup menu.
-Select the Details tab.
-Select the Hardware Ids in the drop-down list.
There should be multiple hardware ids for a device. The second entry is the most specific identifier.
You use that hardware ID to find drivers for that device in the Microsoft Update Catalog.
You will have to use Internet Explorer to visit that site, just copy and paste the hardware id.
You will find a list of drivers, download the one for your sound device and manually update the drivers.