# Extreme glitching audio



## gwynbleidd997 (Oct 19, 2022)

Hi,

It's been a couple months since my laptop started doing this. The sound would work fine for a couple minutes on a youtube video, then it goes crazy.
Here's a video: https://streamable.com/cub0xc

I also got a LatencyMonitor report:





if I pause the video, wait like 30 seconds and resume it will play fine for like 15 seconds and then start glitching again.
Both drivers here seem to be from Microsoft, nothing I manually installed.
Any help is appreciated.

Ryzen 5 3500U
2x8GB 2400Mhz CL14
Intel 660p and an 860 EVO


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## hat (Oct 19, 2022)

I would suggest going to your laptop manufacturer's site and downloading the appropriate drivers for your system from them. Including the network drivers.


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## LabRat 891 (Oct 19, 2022)

IDK if it's the same here, but...
Seen this a few times across the years. It was always related to the battery in the laptop.

[Logical presumption]The basic sensor link for the battery pack, IIRC has very low-level pre-kernal Hardware interrupts. If it's throwing junk data at the mobo, it can cause this.[/presumptions]
The instances I saw 'professionally' all had the sound issue like yours, regardless of era. Have seen this on XP, Vista, and 7.
Had this happen last on a Win7 AMD A6-5200 Dell.
I yanked the battery, attached a beefier charger (JIC), and it got a lot faster.
After tearing apart the batt pack (back in the days when they were removable, even on the cheapest laptop), it was clear the pack was 'in distress'. At least 2 of the cells were reverse charged somehow; only time I've seen 18650s actively leak too. (Was happy those cells only leaked, and don't go nuclear.)

Not impossible that it is 'charging/battery related' but not the battery itself. The last gens of laptops I worked on, it was very important to have the power management drivers installed correctly.
As Hat mentioned, it could be a driver issue.


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## Kissamies (Oct 19, 2022)

I had similar issues with my main rig (Asus Crosshair VII Hero, AMD R5 3600, GTX 1080 Ti) and going back to older drivers (511.79) made the crackling go away. Basically youtube videos were unwatchable because of that with the 517.48 drivers. Also disabling HPET helped with that issue.


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## gwynbleidd997 (Oct 19, 2022)

hat said:


> I would suggest going to your laptop manufacturer's site and downloading the appropriate drivers for your system from them. Including the network drivers.


I'm afraid the network drivers from Acer didn't fix it. Funnily enough LatencyMon shows that everything is fine but youtube audio is still glitchy as hell, same as before.


LabRat 891 said:


> IDK if it's the same here, but...
> Seen this a few times across the years. It was always related to the battery in the laptop.
> 
> [Logical presumption]The basic sensor link for the battery pack, IIRC has very low-level pre-kernal Hardware interrupts. If it's throwing junk data at the mobo, it can cause this.[/presumptions]
> ...


I was running on AC though, earlier and now. If that turns out to be the case, it's not gonna be easily fixable.


Lenne said:


> I had similar issues with my main rig (Asus Crosshair VII Hero, AMD R5 3600, GTX 1080 Ti) and going back to older drivers (511.79) made the crackling go away. Basically youtube videos were unwatchable because of that with the 517.48 drivers. Also disabling HPET helped with that issue.


My laptop doesn't have dedicated graphics though but I am using the crappy radeon something something drivers for the iGPU.


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## Kissamies (Oct 19, 2022)

gwynbleidd997 said:


> I'm afraid the network drivers from Acer didn't fix it. Funnily enough LatencyMon shows that everything is fine but youtube audio is still glitchy as hell, same as before.
> 
> I was running on AC though, earlier and now. If that turns out to be the case, it's not gonna be easily fixable.
> 
> My laptop doesn't have dedicated graphics though but I am using the crappy radeon something something drivers for the iGPU.


Ah, my bad, just checked quickly your system specs and didn't realize that it's a totally different computer.

Have you tried disabling HPET like I mentioned above? It can be disabled easily from the device manager.





Also updating the iGPU drivers could help, just use DDU to get rid of the old ones. I have also the same shit having the highest latency as you, but no problems anymore.


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## gwynbleidd997 (Oct 20, 2022)

Lenne said:


> Ah, my bad, just checked quickly your system specs and didn't realize that it's a totally different computer.
> 
> Have you tried disabling HPET like I mentioned above? It can be disabled easily from the device manager.
> 
> ...


Disabled and restarted, Linus is still glitchy unfortunately.
But it did last a bit longer than usual before it starts going crazy, at first I thought that fixed it.


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## Kissamies (Oct 20, 2022)

gwynbleidd997 said:


> Disabled and restarted, Linus is still glitchy unfortunately.
> But it did last a bit longer than usual before it starts going crazy, at first I thought that fixed it.


Is your other software (OS, browser etc.) and drivers up to date?


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## gwynbleidd997 (Oct 21, 2022)

Lenne said:


> Is your other software (OS, browser etc.) and drivers up to date?


Windows 10 is on 21H2, Chrome is on the latest release.
AMD adrenaline ist also up to date.


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## oobymach (Oct 21, 2022)

Try setting the audio to 16bit or 24bit @ 44khz or 48khz in your audio properties

Right click the volume in your taskbar and Open Sound Settings then under related settings on right side click Sound Control Panel, right click your playback device and click Properties, then click Advanced tab at the top to set the recommended settings.

If the audio Already is set to one of the above settings then you either need an audio driver or a bios update for your mobo.

ALSO: to reduce latency

Have you set devices to msi (message signaled interrupts) mode?

Download the msi util v3 here








						MSI_util_v3
					

MediaFire is a simple to use free service that lets you put all your photos, documents, music, and video in a single place so you can access them anywhere and share them everywhere.



					www.mediafire.com
				



Run as admin, check the box for any device that says MSI under supported modes (usually audio and gpu aren't on by default) and apply in top right corner, restart and re-run the utility to see if your gpu has a negative number instead of a positive one. If it doesn't change update your graphics driver and re-run the utility (all you should have to do to switch to msi mode is check the box, apply and restart).

Also if it's win 10 you're using try this.

1.Search and open Exploit Protection
2.Set Control flow guard (CFG) to OFF by default.
3.Restart

Are you doing any manual voltage settings in bios or overclocking the cpu?


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## Sombreuil (Oct 21, 2022)

Did you change your buffer size by any chance? When I close my DAW and forget to reset the buffer size, I get the exact same glitches.


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## gwynbleidd997 (Nov 6, 2022)

oobymach said:


> Try setting the audio to 16bit or 24bit @ 44khz or 48khz in your audio properties
> 
> Right click the volume in your taskbar and Open Sound Settings then under related settings on right side click Sound Control Panel, right click your playback device and click Properties, then click Advanced tab at the top to set the recommended settings.
> 
> ...


Sorry for the late reply.

It's already at 16bit@48khz and I can't change it, it's greyed out.

I haven't touched the audio drivers, this just started happening randomly. Didn't even update the Radeon drivers either.

I downloaded that utility and did what you said, also turned CFG off but that hasn't fixed it sadly.



> Are you doing any manual voltage settings in bios or overclocking the cpu?


This is a laptop, not the PC listed under system specs, that would be my desktop. So no I can't overclock anything, the BIOS doesn't allow it.



Sombreuil said:


> Did you change your buffer size by any chance? When I close my DAW and forget to reset the buffer size, I get the exact same glitches.


How do I do that on windows?


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## mplayerMuPDF (Nov 7, 2022)

I would download the video with youtube-dl (or a similar, graphical utility for Windows) and try playing it with Windows Media Player (or whatever the equivalent of that is in Windows 10) and VLC Media Player. That way you can at least be sure whether it is network related or not. You can also boot the laptop from a Linux live USB drive and see if it occurs in Linux too; that way you can be sure whether it is hardware related (such as the aforementioned battery caused issue) or software related.


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## netRAT (Nov 8, 2022)

Booting off something other than your current windows installation as suggested above should indeed allow you to narrow down the root cause of the issue (hardware vs software).
If you happen to have an ethernet port on your laptop (or a USB to ethernet adaptor), you could try connecting directly to your router using a cable instead of WiFi (disable your WiFi driver in device manager while testing).
In my experience WiFi can cause extreme DPC latency spikes on some systems depending on a number of variables such as the present WiFi chip, its driver, board firmware (BIOS) and other software related environments.
Bypassing WiFi might offer some clues....


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## gwynbleidd997 (Nov 8, 2022)

mplayerMuPDF said:


> I would download the video with youtube-dl (or a similar, graphical utility for Windows) and try playing it with Windows Media Player (or whatever the equivalent of that is in Windows 10) and VLC Media Player. That way you can at least be sure whether it is network related or not. You can also boot the laptop from a Linux live USB drive and see if it occurs in Linux too; that way you can be sure whether it is hardware related (such as the aforementioned battery caused issue) or software related.





netRAT said:


> Booting off something other than your current windows installation as suggested above should indeed allow you to narrow down the root cause of the issue (hardware vs software).
> If you happen to have an ethernet port on your laptop (or a USB to ethernet adaptor), you could try connecting directly to your router using a cable instead of WiFi (disable your WiFi driver in device manager while testing).
> In my experience WiFi can cause extreme DPC latency spikes on some systems depending on a number of variables such as the present WiFi chip, its driver, board firmware (BIOS) and other software related environments.
> Bypassing WiFi might offer some clues....


I played both a video and a song (local files) and opened up youtube. The same glitching started happening and it seems system wide, not just for youtube.
I also have a ubuntu distro installed already so I booted into that and it looks like this is a windows only problem, cuz I haven't had any issues on linux.


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## netRAT (Nov 9, 2022)

gwynbleidd997 said:


> I played both a video and a song (local files) and opened up youtube. The same glitching started happening and it seems system wide, not just for youtube.
> I also have a ubuntu distro installed already so I booted into that and it looks like this is a windows only problem, cuz I haven't had any issues on linux.


In that case I'd image the storage device (Macrium Reflect Free for example) and install a matching edition of windows fresh from an official MS .iso (avoid restoring from a recovery partition). And rebuild from a clean start. 
You can get your drivers from your laptop's official support page but be mindful installing only what you really need as opposed to bloat.
Oh and be cautious if/when installing any extra AV/internet security software... 
These can sometimes destroy your computing experience while offering no benefit at all.


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