Noise and Sound Distortion with Wifi Traffic

Hi all,

I also am having this problem on my PC (self-built desktop with wifi enabled motherboard), while on my home internet (fast fibre optic). It too began around the same time as this thread was started. I initially thought it must be hardware as I have an external soundcard/monitors, but as you all are having similar issues on very different systems it seems it might well be software/driver related.

I am using a powerful desktop CPU so the usage it doesn't seem to go very high at all, but there is significant distortion and lag when downloading something while sound is playing (whether streaming or in iTunes); the worst of this is when trying to perform an internet speed test. 'System and compressed memory' does seem to go higher than usual, however, so I'm not sure if that's something.

A restart does appear to be a quick fix, but it unfortunately seems to be a recurring issue. Additionally, the chip I am using (Qualcomm Atheros AR956x) doesn't seem to have any recent drivers, so that doesn't seem to be an option.

Has anyone found a solution to this, or are we just going to have to wait on an update?

snjx123 said:

Hi all,

I also am having this problem on my PC (self-built desktop with wifi enabled motherboard), while on my home internet (fast fibre optic). It too began around the same time as this thread was started. I initially thought it must be hardware as I have an external soundcard/monitors, but as you all are having similar issues on very different systems it seems it might well be software/driver related.

I am using a powerful desktop CPU so the usage it doesn't seem to go very high at all, but there is significant distortion and lag when downloading something while sound is playing (whether streaming or in iTunes); the worst of this is when trying to perform an internet speed test. 'System and compressed memory' does seem to go higher than usual, however, so I'm not sure if that's something.

A restart does appear to be a quick fix, but it unfortunately seems to be a recurring issue. Additionally, the chip I am using (Qualcomm Atheros AR956x) doesn't seem to have any recent drivers, so that doesn't seem to be an option.

Has anyone found a solution to this, or are we just going to have to wait on an update?

Hey snjx123,

Thanks for sharing your issue. I haven't found a solution yet, but I reinstalled my sound card driver. I'll let you know how that works. Also, you mentioned that your wireless card doesn't have a recent driver, would you say that you didn't update the wireless driver around the time the problem started? Can you see if Windows got updated at all around that time? I'm starting to suspect maybe it's not a wireless issue, but a Windows issue or a mix of both...

Jack

Hey jack,

Yes, I haven't updated the wireless driver recently; the last driver was in 2014 so I think I probably last installed it when I got the computer. And yes, Windows updated on March 23rd, so it is very possible there is some kind of bug that was introduced then. The next Windows update is probably fairly soon (they do it every month or so), so we'll see whether that solves anything. Hopefully it gets fixed soon..

Stumbled upon this webpage XPS 15z Audio Crackling/Stuttering with network traffic over wireless (Latency Issue) - Audio - Laptop - Dell Community
.

The problem described there is very similar to the issue here. They attributed the problem to the Wireless driver and some issue with the latency in the the DPC (deferred procedure call) mechanism in Windows OS. It's pretty long and technical, but a good read.

This new Windows 10 update (Windows 10 update history - Windows Help
) "improved reliability for Internet Explorer 11, .NET Framework, wireless LAN, Microsoft Edge, Windows Update, logon, Bluetooth, network connectivity, map apps, video playback, Cortana, USB, Windows Explorer, and Narrator".

Hopefully it fixes our problem!

Updated, still happening There seem to be a lot of people experiencing it at least, so hopefully it'll be fixed at some point soon...