Sudden crackling sound issue

[Hopsun]

I recently ran into this annoying crackling issue through my headphones.

I tried two different pairs of headphones that went through different ports, to make sure they weren't the issue - still had crackling.

Restarting seems to subdue the crackling for a short period of time.

The sound is only there when sound is being played through my headset.

What should i try next?

 

[InvalidError]

The noise is coming either from the motherboard or PSU. You only hear it while playing sounds because the sound chip probably shuts down its DAC and output amplifier when not in use to save power.

I had noise coming out from my amplifier on my C2D and its PSU died a few months later (would no longer reliably power up). After I put in a new PSU, the noise was gone. Noisy supply rails were the root cause of my audio output noise.

 

[Hopsun]

The PSU could really do that? It really has nothing to do with the sound card? The reason i ask this is, last time i changed my PSU, i had MAJOR issues and it resulted in me having to repurchase a lot of parts - aka, i'm scared to replace the PSU. If you really think that's the issue, i gotta balls up.

 

[InvalidError]

The quality of the sound card or built-in audio will have an effect on how susceptible it is to electrical noise from everything in your PC. The noise you get will usually be mainly a combination of PSU, CPU VRM and GPU VRM noise.

There is no easy way to find out which component is responsible for the noise your audio is picking up other than swap them out if the noise bothers you that much. Your other option is to use an USB DAC which will put the DAC as far away from the noise sources as possible and hopefully eliminate whatever gets there.

If you replaced your poor quality PSU that blew up some of your other components with another low quality PSU, then the appearance of noise over time could be your cue that your new crappy PSU is going bad.