Windows 10: Desktop lagging and audio popping / crackling when playing games

This is happening to me a lot in a game called Hell Let Loose. I’ve tried asking for help over there but have gotten no response. When there’s a lot of action going on the sound becomes so unbearable I have to take my headset off because it hurts my ears. It almost turns into a mushed white noise.

I feel like the lag is possibly due to the audio stuttering if that’s even real. When I unplugged my headset i stopped lagging as bad. Also, the game will start stuttering along with my mouse and keyboard, it'll make my sensitivity feel way lower because the mouse isn't registering all the movement. This is always accompanied by audio popping and stuttering as well. I can barely find anything on google, reddit, YouTube, etc. about this issue.

I’ve tried what feels like everything. DDU, reinstalled / updated drivers, reinstalled the game itself. I’ve been trying to make this stop for 2 days now, it’s super annoying.

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Crackle/Popping Sound When Playing Audio + Stuttering Video Games

I just built a PC:

• ASUS ROG STRIX Z370-H GAMING
  
• Intel i7 8700k
  
• EVGA Geforce GTX 1080 FTW 8 GB
  
• Corsair RMx Series, RM750x 750w
  
• Samsung 850 EVO 250 GB SSD
  
• Seagate 2 TB FireCuda Gaming SSHD
  
• Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2x8GB) DDR4 DRAM 3200 MHz
  
• Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
  

Not currently OC'd, default specs.

Whenever I play audio (YouTube, foobar, VLC player, video games) I can hear a popping/crackling sound whenever I start or stop it. It's like the small crackle sound you hear when you plug in headphones/speakers. This also happens during playback, although not randomly – it's usually a specific part of the audio/video file that causes the popping. I can even find the particular "pop" spot and replay it.

Additionally, whenever I'm playing a video game I get random frame skips at random intervals. This happens in all my video games – WoW, Subnautica, Fallout 4, Dark Souls 3.

Originally I had the ASUS Prime z370-A which I thought to be the issue. But I replaced it with the ROG Strix and I can still hear the popping/crackling and the frame skips still happen.

Does anyone have experience with this issue? This is my first build over $1k and I'm very distressed that I cannot find the problem. Could it be the hard drives? RAM, maybe?

 

Audio Crackling/Popping. Input/Visual/Lag

This seems to be a larger and possibly cascading issue. Working on my nephews computer, I first noticed it on Titanfall 2. Then it started happening in Battlefield 1, now a few days later it is happening in almost all of the games. Youtube and netflix seem
to be unaffected. Here is just a small list of the steps I tried doing today.

Issue:

Severe audio crackling and popping leading to visual and control lag in most video games tried since last Windows 10 update.

Severity:

All affected games are mostly unplayable.

Games affected:

Titanfall 2

Battlefield 1

Heroes of The Storm

World of Warcraft

Overwatch

Note:

So far, no Steam games seem to be affected. Also, Titanfall 2 was playing PERFECTLY before late Thurs night/Fri Morning.

System Specs:

Alienware x51 (Custom-Upgraded)

i5

16gb

750Ti Nvidia

*Please note; We use the HDMI sound from the 750 Ti.

Date problem became noticeable: ~11/19/16

List of attempted solves.:

Switching from HDMI sound to on-board Reltek sound card = No change

Uninstalling/reinstalling Nvida Drivers = No change

Rolling back to formerly known good Nvidia drivers = No change

Uninstalling/reinstalling Window driver package = No change

Updating Bios = No change

Trying various BIOS switches (speed step, etc.) = No change

Changing input/output audio (trying dif. cables and speakers) = No change

Disabling Nvidia "Shadowplay" and all tertiary programs = No change

Manually updating all graphic and audio drivers = No change

In short, I have done everything I can do up to reformatting, which I would be willing to do if I thought it would help. I will probably do this at some point within the next couple of days.

When I started googling the issue with "Past month" filter on, the results were/are astounding. This does indeed seem to be a wide spread issue and the usual fixes are having no effect. Try it for yourself. Google/Bing search "Audio crackling in X" were
X is the name of the game. Make sure the results in past "month" filter are on, in some cases you can use past "week" and still get a large number.

Basically this is an FYI post to let you know that if you have this issue and have tried everything, you are not going crazy.

 

Audio issues when playing games (crackling/popping)

I have recently bought a Lenovo Z70 (Laptop) and when I am playing most games I have frequent pops/crackling in the audio. When I play games such as Skyrim and CS:GO (through Steam) and Smite (tried through the Steam and non-Steam version) the audio issues
persist. This is only when I am playing games however, watching videos and listening to music is fine. I have downloaded a latency checker which gave me reason to believe that the issues stem from a driver issue, I have disabled most if not all of the possible
drivers to no avail, the crackling remains. The most likely issue is with the audio driver 'Conexant SmartAudio HD' for windows 10 I have downloaded and re-installed the driver from the Lenovo website yet this changed naught. It may be a compatibility issue
with games running on Direct X 9 and below, but I don't have enough of an understanding to be able to find out what's wrong exactly. I trawled the internet and tried several other thing, one fix may be reverting to windows 7 yet I would rather leave that as
a last reserve.

My Laptop's Specs are as follows

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5500U CPU @ 2.4GHz 2.4GH

RAM: 16.0 GB (DDR3)

NVIDIA GeForce 840M

Windows 10 Home (64bit)

Games tested with issues: Smite, Counter Strike : Global Offensive, The Elder Scrolls IV: Skyrim, Team Fortress 2, ArcheAge, Minecraft

Games tested without issues:

If anyone has any suggestion on what to do I'd greatly appreciate it, even if that's directing me to someone that does.

Thanks, Aaron