Editorial Windows 10 1903 Has a Nasty Audio Stutter Bug Microsoft Hasn't Managed to Fix

[lexluthermiester]

I think he is saying sound quality is better in Linux, I know as a high rep member on Head-Fi a lot of people over there use Linux for their audio setups.

This has been my experience as well.

Besides latency problems, crackling and overall low performance? It works.

Interesting. I have never had those kinds of problems.

 

[Dragonsmonk]

My Gigabyte x370 Xtreme on-board sound is plenty good ty. There's a reason it cost so much.

I have yet to see an onboard card being able to drive my 250ohm headset

My new MB will also have the ALC 1220, and I hope it is enough, but I have to wait and see.
Currently running a Xonar DX, no stuttering to be reported there.

 

[Space Lynx]

And where do you plug the microphone?

Not an issue for my personal use case, never had need for one.

Besides latency problems, crackling and overall low performance? It works.

Never had an issue with Mint and my Modi 3 DAC.

 

[Chomiq]

Not an issue for my personal use case, never had need for one.

Thing is, if you want a dac/amp with mic input you have very limited selection and using dedicated sound card like the ones from Asus or Creative is often the only solution.

That being said I just checked a review of Creative's BlasterX AE-5 and when it comes to mic input I hear no improvement from ALC1220 on my new board. Same amount of low noise static with gain enabled.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Never had issues also with my ZxR... althou I haven't been on stable builds for years. Always in insider builds.

 

[Metroid]

i do have an asus xonar stx and no issues here, i really thought it would be some issues cause asus did not update its drivers for about 3 years, so far so good and i'm on amd b450 which many says is not good for asus xonar series and so far no issues.

And by the way, i would advise any of you to not buy pcie sound cards, you will be better off with external dacs and that is going to be my next sound card, external dac.

 

[olymind1]

Luckily no issue on my end: B450 Tomahawk + Ryzen 2600 + Creative SB X-Fi Titanium HD (with the latest driver) + Win10 1903.

No crackling, no distortion, no audio cut outs.

 

[stimpy88]

Schiit Modi 3 DAC -driverless- for life ~

Hardly what this article is talking about, is it? But hey, you got to brag about your DAC...

 

[lexluthermiester]

I have yet to see an onboard card being able to drive my 250ohm headset

And that can be a problem for many.

That being said I just checked a review of Creative's BlasterX AE-5 and when it comes to mic input I hear no improvement from ALC1200 on my new board. Same amount of low noise static with gain enabled.

This is because Creative didn't invest as much time on the mic input, sadly, as they did on sound output. It is however, by any reasonable standard, a good and acceptable input. Streamers will have nothing to complain about. Only creators of a certain market sector will want/need better.

For example, I don't stream but I want high quality output because I use an actual HiFi stereo system for sound on both of my PC's. Onboard rubbish is just not good enough. So Creative's Sound Blaster cards fit the need.

 

[Space Lynx]

Hardly what this article is talking about, is it? But hey, you got to brag about your DAC...

Exactly what this article is about actually, if you want less issues you use something that requires very minimal install... this is basic logic 101. I had issues in the past with Realtek, one of the main reasons I said enough and moved on to a proper DAC, with 2mb auto install of driver.

 

[demkd]

I had a similar problem on 180x builds with my SB ZxR, the problem was solved by disabling windows quick start in the power options.

 

[nurion]

It took the Tech Industry and the Tech Media Press, only 4 months to report the issue and possibly resolve it (for all pc's).
People were also reporting issues since 1809 ,when the the system driver structure started to change.
Companys or Organizations true potentials ,shows when there is a situation unresolved ,that affects a major portion of their customer base..and they can't resolve the matter and then hide it under the carpet.

 

[Trompochi]

It's funny how I always had audio stuttering before 1903 on my x470 taichi+2700x build, no matter what driver version or settings I changed. After installing 1903 I haven't experienced a single audio issue.

 

[Schnebdreleg]

I also own a Asus xonar ae and did not have these issues. However, I have an other issue with my mic/line in with this sound card across two different systems. Sometimes, when I use discord or TeamSpeak, the mic stops working or sends out noise. I have to switch audio devices or reconnect the mic to make it work again. This does not happen when I use the onboard sound cards for mic input, but it's kind of weard to have one sound card just for the speakers and one just for the mic. Maybe someone heard of this problem before?

 

[PanicLake]

I think he is saying sound quality is better in Linux, I know as a high rep member on Head-Fi a lot of people over there use Linux for their audio setups.

That is remarkably ignorant to say. When the audio ones and zeros reaches your sound card DAC (Digital to Analog Converter) it will be the same ones and zeros regardless of the operating system, unless the software or drivers are mishandling those bits.

 

[neatfeatguy]

I'm not sure about speaker audio quality with the latest Win 10 update, but my younger brother lost all options in the Win 10 Settings window for audio devices to select his headset as the output source for his speakers. He said he used to go into the Sound settings, but it's not working anymore.

I had to remind him of the Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound -> Sound
From there he could select his headphones as his audio output to get things working correctly on his headphones.

 

[atomiccow]

When I first tried 1903 half a year ago, I realized it caused popping with my Oppo HA-1, which uses an ASIO driver. I reformatted to 1803 and stayed on that until I needed to update to 1903 again to use RTX on my new 2070 Super. Low and behold MS actually managed to fix an issue for me for once. My Oppo HA-1 does seem to work fine now.

 

[Solaris17]

At least 7 isnt hampered by ongoing problems associated with bi yearly forced builds.

Can’t wait to see the problems it’s hampered with when it finally goes EOL.

My sound works fine though.

 

[cygnus_1]

BCDEDIT /SET DISABLEDYNAMICTICK YES

I would honestly set that on any desktop system that you're not trying to get absolutely minimal idle power consumption on. You'll see better/more consistent performance with the dynamic tick disabled.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Can’t wait to see the problems it’s hampered with when it finally goes EOL.

Windows XP never magically became an insecure OS and interestingly still isn't. Windows 7 is unlikely to become such either. Still being EOL will trigger software and hardware devs to being phasing out support. As irritating and sad as it is, it's the future..

 

[Solaris17]

Windows XP never magically became an insecure OS and interestingly still isn't. Windows 7 is unlikely to become such either. Still being EOL will trigger software and hardware devs to being phasing out support. As irritating and sad as it is, it's the future..

None of that is true. Would love to further discuss security in a thread meant for it.

 

[micropage7]

and at this point newer one not always better than previous one, sometimes i feel the more the patch it the more that used to work well before screwed up then

 

[remixedcat]

WASAPI / DAC / JRIVER MASTER RACE. Very move l nice and smooth

 

[trparky]

Onboard rubbish is just not good enough.

I have no idea what you're talking about because if you've used any of the recent Realtek audio products like the ALC1220 you'd know that it's really not that bad at all. I use headphones quite a bit and I have no issues, it sounds great.

 

[danbert2000]

It's just not very useful to have a sound card for the vast majority of PC users, due to wireless headphones, integrated audio (especially on laptops), USB DACs with better driver support, HDMI audio on the HTPC side. You need to have very specific requirements and equipment for a sound card to be worth anything today.

I know a lot of people don't want to bother with all the driver headaches and extra cost for a subjective improvement to audio. It seems like a lot of the energy behind gaming headphones are to do virtual surround, another situation where there is not going to be any benefit to having a really nice stereo out solution.

So I feel for people with audio issues. Last year I was dealing with some of the regressions around DD Live or DTS Interactive/Connect for 5.1 surround sound, another oft-ignored part of the PC audio equation. There is no excuse for Microsoft not to test their OS with these cards at some point in the process. But I'm not surprised these issues cropped up, I'm not surprised they didn't catch it for a while, and I'm not surprised that there aren't too many people complaining because sound cards are obsolete for 90% of their use cases.