USB Audio Popping

[Kerfindo]

Ever since I upgraded from windows 7 to windows 10 (Fresh install), I've been experiencing brief audio popping/cracking noise. Sometimes I could go an hour and not hear anything, other times I hear a pop every 30 seconds. There has to be sound playing for the popping to occur. Its brief, but can get annoying when listening to music. (The popping seems to be more prominent when watching internet videos like youtube etc.)

I have tried many things including:
-Updated drivers (Realtek HD Audio)(AMD GPU drivers)(Realtek Network Card)
-Tried disabling Realtek HD Audio since it doesn't effect USB audio
-I do not have a WiFi card so its not that
-Its not a DPC Latency issue; No spikes from LatencyMon
-Disabled sound enhancements from playback devices
-Its not the headphones themselves as they work fine on other sources
-I tried an old set of ear buds that weren't USB and they seemed to work fine so it may just be USB audio.

I have a Dell XPS 435t/9000 that's about 4 years old with some hardware changes like PSU/GPU etc., maybe its the motherboard? (Though that's kind of a stretch). Dell says that certain computers don't support windows 10 upgrade, but I feel like that's just so they don't hold you responsible if you do upgrade, as everything else works perfectly.

Regardless, I'd appreciate any help or suggestions with this issue.

 

[Slashgeek]

Do the problems occur with all software? Or just one particular set of programs? You may have problems with your codecs, and installing new ones or using a different player may work.

 

[skit75]

Try disabling any/all Power Saving settings. Do you get the pops with PC speakers?

Also, if you haven't swapped the USB cable that would be an easy test.

I tested about a dozen different retail USB cables this year against the USB 2.0 specification and found only one cable that actually measured within tolerance for the end-to-end shield test. A USB 2.0 cable is supposed to be able to [strike]maintain[/strike] measure .6 Ohms or less of resistance in an aggravated(moving or wiggling) cable measurement. The shielded braids inside are for the most part horrific in this test with some spiking well above 200 Ohms!

The one USB 2.0, (3 meter I believe) cable that actually measured in specification was priced 29.95 @ Fry's. Taking a few cables apart revealed that some cheapo cables weren't even soldering the braids to the connector and had opted for a cheaper crimping solution.

Most devices could care less about end to end shielding until a static charge on your USB device decides to take a different path to ground because the shield resistance outweighs the next closest path to ground.

Food for thought.

 

[Kerfindo]

Do the problems occur with all software? Or just one particular set of programs? You may have problems with your codecs, and installing new ones or using a different player may work.

I notice it most when playing internet videos either in html5 or flash, I've also noticed it through voice chat software like skype and to a lesser extent when playing games. Oddly I haven't noticed it too much playing windows media player.

 

[Kerfindo]

Try disabling any/all Power Saving settings. Do you get the pops with PC speakers?

Right now I have my power saving plan set to high performance by default. Not sure how to disable it completely. I don't have any speakers to test, although I had old ear buds with an audio input connection that seemed to work fine.

 

[Kerfindo]

Also, if you haven't swapped the USB cable that would be an easy test.

I'm assuming you mean the USB cable to the headphone itself? A good suggestion, however like I said, the headphones work on other computers/PS4 etc.. I've even tried a different pair of USB headphones on this computer and the problem still persists so its not the headphones themselves.

 

[skit75]

Hmm...

I am guessing you have tried multiple USB ports also?

How about re-installing your Chipset driver? USB headphones typically have a soundcard built in to them. I wouldn't expect Realtek integrated audio having any effect, disabled or enabled.

 

[Kerfindo]

Hmm...

I am guessing you have tried multiple USB ports also?

How about re-installing your Chipset driver? USB headphones typically have a soundcard built in to them. I wouldn't expect Realtek integrated audio having any effect, disabled or enabled.

I have tried all my USB ports both front and back with the same results. As for chipset driver, I went to intel and installed the Intel Driver Update Utility that should locate and install any driver automatically, but it did not detect anything, so I'm not entirely sure if it works for windows 10 or I have to find them manually(from which I have no idea where to even look if I have to find them manually).

Edit: I looked up where to find what type of chipset I have and I found some info that told me to look in device manager under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers. As of right now it shows: ATA channel 0, ATA channel 1, Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller. Pretty sure that means I have the standard drivers for it and not the manufacture ones. No sure where to even begin with that.

Edit Edit: Apparently Intel doesn't have many older chipsets for windows 10 and I had to rely on the chipset drivers from Microsoft directly. Apparently, this is a big issue in intel's forums atm, so you think this may be the cause?

 

[Kerfindo]

Been fiddling with a lot of things and I just cant figure it out. Seems to be most noticeable on internet videos like html5 or flash, and voice chat software more than anything. No idea what else I could do. Maybe an issue with the network card driver, but that's just speculation.

 

[Rennik33]

I have been struggling with the same issue since I upgraded to Windows 10 and I finally found a solution, or at least a workaround. I bought a PCI-e USB 3.0 card since my motherboard only has USB 2.0 ports and plugged my headset into it on a whim. To my surprise, my headset works perfectly when plugged into the card. My guess is that Windows 10 doesn't fully support older motherboards' USB protocol but does support the PCI-e card's protocol. I really don't know enough about it to say, all I know and care about is that my headset works fine with no popping whatsoever when plugged into an expansion card.

The card I am using is "ORICO PVU3-502I Monster USB3.0 PCI - Express Card", but I really don't think the exact card matters at all.

 

[skit75]

The expansion card doesn't need the motherboard's chipset driver for anything. It has its own USB controller on-board that the manufacturer wrote a driver for and they would qualify which OS support it has. So even if your motherboard manufacturer or Intel is not maintaining compatibility, it wouldn't matter with an expansion card. That is the beauty of expansion ports.

 

[EWilma]

I make music with usb, usb soundcard, usb midi controller, 4 usb instruments. I recently ditched midi and went for usb to connect all my audio things and developed crackles and pops in the audio chain. I found a cheap midi cable crossing an audio cable producing interferance. Then i unplugged the usb hub, gone, no more interferance. Bought a new Orico usb3.0 hub, the crackles still there. Identified the source (turning on different units) it was a usb cable crossing an audio cable. The solution is to seperate the runs of controller cables and audio cables in air or plastic or metal containment E.g. if you run a cpu with sound through external speakers, if an audio cable crosses or is near a usb cable it can introduce static to the audio path. Shiny cheap thin cable coating = badly insulated. Thicker more rubbery insulation seems to be better, more expensive. This shit is hard to track,so give me a medal you canalso have hardware and driver glitches which can lead to total re-installs if need be. I even had to buy a new modern soundcard in all this crackle pollava. The drivers stopped working well with windoze updates, discontinued support etc. More info - https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/eradicating-pc-audio-clicks-pops