Sound Crackles

Vince Massi said:

Ngb5, yesterday I had a lot of crackling suddenly appear, and this morning I solved it. It probably won't work for you, but it won't hurt to try.

Go into Device manager and select Audio Inputs and Outputs. Somehow, some way, my default audio device was "Headphones" instead of speakers. I have never used headphones on this machine. I set it back to speakers, and the crackling disappeared.

Hey thanks for the help but unfortunately I'm running headphones and it is already the default device

Looks like from the threads I've read there is no real fix for this or at least one that I've come across. Seems to be Win10 related and possibly with one of their updates. I guess it's something I'll have to deal with..

dalchina said:

There are some specific things people found have solved their problem, but more as a workaround than real 'solution'; it only affects some PCs and can depend on what software is run. There's no one solution for all cases.

Am I best to just deal with it and hope one day it's fixed since there is no real fix for it? I've tried a lot of stuff and nothing works.

dalchina said:

It seems all you can do is try to find
a. from the experience of others
b. by analyis (e.g. using xperf, a Microsoft tracing tool)
c. by intution
a workaround that works for you.

Thus a good number have found not using Bitdender's port scan eliminates the symptom.
It just seems more common than in previous versions of Windows... but only affects some people.

Ah that's interesting as I do use Bitdefender so I will have to check for this setting and see if it helps. But it is safe to say this isn't a problem related to hardware? For instance my motherboard, cpu, gpu are fine?

For the most part my fix has been restarting my computer and it has worked but I have to do that maybe once every day or two.

*edit* I believe I have found the option for the port scan, it is in Firewall settings. I want to turn OFF 'Block port scans in the network'?

Have you tried right-clicking the sound icon on the task bar and letting Windows look for the solution?

Vince Massi said:

Have you tried right-clicking the sound icon on the task bar and letting Windows look for the solution?

It doesn't detect anything but so far things seem to be good but I feel like it's too soon to say but I think the Bitdefender change worked. I will update the thread in a couple days or if the problem comes back before then.

dalchina said:

Thus a good number have found not using Bitdender's port scan eliminates the symptom.
It just seems more common than in previous versions of Windows... but only affects some people.

So it's been 6 days since I did this fix for Bitdefender and I haven't had a SINGLE problem. I definitely would've experienced it by now. This is the fix I've been looking for. Hopefully it isn't a fluke.

Just thought I'd do an update. The port scan was definitely the problem. Just moved my computer and Bitdefender automatically turned it on and I was experiencing the same problems until I turned it off!