Hello,

Im new here, so nice to meet you^^. Im experiencing an issue with my pc for about the last 5 days. In these days ive been working on this issue all of my spare time and i cant seem to fix it. Im no expert on windows or pc's in general, but i know how to troubleshoot etc. So thats what ive been doing, but sadly with no luck so far... So i thought i need to ask the question since nothing seems to help me. (my apologies if my english is a bit weird sometimes, not my native language)

Summary of the problem:
Audio glitch/artifacts when stopping or resuming audio.
Tried many sollutions to fix the problem.
Problem persists with multiple drivers/devices/headphones.
Problem persists after complete fresh windows installation.
Problem started randomly without any previous issues.

Audio example: (recorded with phone because a rendered audio file doesnt contain these artifacts)
Dropbox - example - Simplify your life

Explanation:

Im experiencing an issue with windows. Let me start with the problem. Since about 5 days ive been experiencing issues with windows the windows sound. When i play a youtube video or when using ableton or any other program that uses audio, i get this really loud clicking sound when i start or stop audio/video. It is just a really hard click. It does not perceive to me as a samplerate or bufferrate problem. This problem is especially noticable when in ableton (DAW) and hearing a single instrument with a delay. Its like the sound cuts out and pops back in etc, but it is acompanied by a loud click. At first i thought it was an issue with my audio interface (focusrite clarett pre ext.psu.), but the problem also persists when i use a headphone inside my motherboards audio output (i also used 5 different headphones to test), or via my hdmi out or focusrite scarlett 2i2. (check audio example)

Ive been searching online for many sollutions, ive tried all the sollutions microsoft suggested in this article
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...lems#v1h=tab01

And a lot of more tests/settings i found where people had simmilar issues.
These are mostly the following - check my dpc latency, different drivers (installing, updating, removing etc), cpu usage and stability, bitrates, samplerates, bufferrates, quality of audio settings, sound effect changes, system sound changes, sound device enhancements or priority settings, Usb power plans, CPU power plans, ram frequencies etc. I went as far as to do a clean windows install, bios changes for optimal performance etc., and even a full rebuild of my pc to rule out a possible short or electrical issue inside of my pc. Nothing seems to fix it. (i did probably forget some things i tried)

At a certain point i thought it might have been a ground loop issue, so i even wasted money by buying stuff to eliminate this problem with no succes. My system appears to have no issues, the cpu runs stable, gpu shows no problems, ram is working properly, storage drives are working like they should. Ive eliminated almost all hardware besides my psu and motherboard, but i cant seem to find if this could cause an issue with audio clicking. I find this especially strange because this all just appeared from one minute to another.

Im really frustrated at the moment because nothing seems to fix my problem. I hope that anyone has a sollution because this is driving me crazy! the weird thing is, about 6 days ago, there were absolutely no issues whatsoever with my entire system. It had just arisen from one minute till the next.

My pc is fairly new (about 3 months.)
specs:
win - Version 2004 (build 19041.572)
cpu - 10600k
gpu - rtx 2060
mobo - z490m-plus
psu - Coolermaster 650gold
ram - corsair 16gb 2 dims 3200 DDR4
Storage - Samsung m.2 ssd.

System has no issues other than this, no booting issues, bios issues etc. system runs stable and has no tinkering done to it besides some power/performance settings to make sure it was not anything related to the power settings.

Now my most educated guess would be that windows or some audio driver is the cause of this issue, but i dont understand why a fresh install would not fix this problem. My gut feeling says this might be an electrical issue i.e. not enough power driving my motherboard? or an excess of power causing an electrical short sound thats audible through my speakers/headphones.

Please does anyone have a sollution??

Thank you in advance! ,

Kevin. Version 2004 (build 19041.572)