[SOLVED] BitDefender causing audio popping when listening to music and browsing web over RealTek Audio (but not over GPU audio)

[leftisthominid]

I have a Gigabyte Aero 15 with BitDefender Total Security. I have recently come to notice that I get audio popping sounds when browsing the web and listening to music at the same time. I get it with Firefox, Chrome, and Edge, so it isn't from the browser.

Interestingly, it only occurs when I am using the RealTek audio built-in to my laptop's motherboard. When I am outputting audio over HDMI from either of my GPUs (Nvidia or Intel), the problem disappears. I tried changing my RealTek driver (as well as my Killer Ethernet/WiFi drivers) many times, but I had no luck in fixing it. Then on a lark, I tried uninstalling BitDefender, and then the popping went away. It appears BitDefender is conflicting with RealTek in some way.

When I disable Advance Threat Defense it goes away, but disabling that is problematic (so I re-enabled it). I originally thought it might have been the microphone monitor, but that is not the case. Does anyone have a similar problem? (Also, my BitDefender is expiring soon, can anyone recommend a non-Kaspersky alternative?)

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This is one site that triggers the popping noises. It triggers over RealTek, but not over HDMI audio. It doesn't do it 100% of the time, but if I play music in the background and F5 enough times, I will hear pops.

 

[popatim]

Thats he kind of symptoms you get when you have latency. use one of the free tester utilities and see if you can narrow it down. DTP Latency Checker and LatencyMon are the two that come to mind.

 

[leftisthominid]

Thats he kind of symptoms you get when you have latency. use one of the free tester utilities and see if you can narrow it down. DTP Latency Checker and LatencyMon are the two that come to mind.

I've used latencymon, it finds spikes from random things at random times, but I think that is more laptop model specific than this.

I don't get the pops when I using HDMI audio. They only come over RealTek and they go away when I remove/disable BitDefender. I've tried a variety of different driver configurations. It IS BitDefender that is causing this.

Can you recommend a replacement?

 

[popatim]

Avira is decent but the free is a bit on the annoying side with all the 'buy me' popups down by the system tray.
We've recently switched to Sophos at work and so far it's doing very well. Not sure what your budget is but there is a free one to see i your popping reappears also.

 

[leftisthominid]

Avira is decent but the free is a bit on the annoying side with all the 'buy me' popups down by the system tray.
We've recently switched to Sophos at work and so far it's doing very well. Not sure what your budget is but there is a free one to see i your popping reappears also.

Do you have any experience with Norton? It appears to be another of the top ranked ones (alongside Kaspersky and BitDefender).

 

[popatim]

I used to love Norton and then they went thru a period of putting out bad versions and haven't used them since. It's been a long time...
I've used AVG, Avira, BitDefender, Nod, Malware Bytes, Zone Alarm... probably more that I dont remember. I tend to buy whats been test proven and on sale.