Windows 10: Audio crackling due to nvlddmkm.sys Nvidia driver latency issue

Hello people,
while playing Arma 3 I noticed strange crackling/popping noises in the menu and in-game when there were a lot of background sounds. I found a video of someone else on YouTube who had the same issue:
Arma 3- Crackling and Popping Audio - YouTube

The crackling was also brought to my attention during video playback on YouTube at some occasions. Sometimes videos froze or turned black. I did not think much of it when I first noticed it. A few days ago, I remember having a "nvlddmkm.sys stopped working and recovered" warning when the pc came back from sleep mode that I now recognize as another symptom of the issue. I also experienced multiple BSODs caused by nvlddmkm.sys a month or so ago that I suspected to be caused by faulty drivers. However, no BSOD or "stopped working warning" has happened to me ever since.

When I googled the sound crackles today, I read that there might be a connection to a latency issue with my drivers. I installed LatencyMon (Dpc Latency checker doesn't work with Windows 10). I let it run in the background while I continued playing Arma 3 and it confirmed my suspicion. According to Latency Mon, the Nvidia Windows Kernel Mode driver, my old friend Nvlddmkm.sys, is causing the "buffer underruns". I attached screenshots of the LatencyMon results to this post. When I found out that the problem lay with my graphics driver, I did a complete clean install of Windows 10. I turned off automatic driver updates and reinstalled all drivers manually from scratch. But the issue persisted. I even plugged in a different pair of speakers to see if my subwoofers were failing but still no avail. The new speakers had even worse sound disruptions (strange low tone background noise eve though there was no sound input). I also updated my BIOS.

I am getting the idea that this is in fact a problem with my GPU, a factory overclocked GTX 980ti. I hope there are a few experts who can give their opinion on this.

Thank you very much for taking your time to help me with this!

:)

 

Extremely high DPC Latency from Directx Graphics Kernel since Anniversary Update.

Did you try only installing the graphics driver and not the audio/3D driver when installing the Nvidia drivers? Not installing the HD audio driver fixed my latency issue.

 

Audio crackling due to DPC latency

Hello!

While playing Arma 3 I noticed strange crackling/popping noises in the menu and in-game when there were a lot of background sounds. I found a video of someone else on YouTube who had the same issue:

Arma 3- Crackling and Popping Audio - YouTube

The crackling was also brought to my attention during video playback on YouTube at some occasions. Sometimes videos froze or turned black. I did not think much of it when I first noticed it. A few days ago, I remember having a "nvlddmkm.sys stopped working
and recovered" warning when the pc came back from sleep mode that I now recognize as another symptom of the issue. I also experienced multiple BSODs caused by nvlddmkm.sys a month or so ago that I suspected to be caused by faulty drivers. However, no BSOD
has happened to me ever since. Today I got another "nvlddmkm.sys stopped working" notification while I was watching a YouTube video.

When I googled the sound crackles, I read that there might be a connection to a latency issue with my drivers. I installed LatencyMon (Dpc Latency checker doesn't work with Windows 10). I let it run in the background while I continued playing Arma 3 and it
confirmed my suspicion. According to LatencyMon, the Nvidia Windows Kernel Mode driver, my old friend Nvlddmkm.sys, is causing the "buffer underruns". I attached screenshots of the LatencyMon results to this post. When I found out that the problem lay with
my graphics driver, I did a complete clean install of Windows 10. I turned off automatic driver updates and reinstalled all drivers manually from scratch. But the issue persisted. I even plugged in a different pair of speakers to see if my subwoofers were
failing but still no avail. The new speakers had even worse sound disruptions (strange low tone background noise eve though there was no sound input). I also updated my BIOS.

I also changed the processor minimum state to 100% in the power plan settings and entered
BCDEDIT /SET DISABLEDYNAMICTICK YES into an elevated command prompt. None of these fixes worked. I also booted the system up in safe mode, I could not reproduce the issue though, as I couldn't run LatencyMon, Microsoft Edge, as I was unable to start any
app.

Finally I created an experf trace with the Windows Performance Toolkit while I experienced the sound crackling in the hope that you are able to analyse it:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/36ka05db2qtobl9/CPU.zip?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fh8owxen04...ernel.zip?dl=0

Thank you for reading this. Do you think this might be harware related and my graphics card is bad?



Edit:

Duplicate thread:

Link:

DPC Latency Audio Crackling

Title:

DPC Latency Audio Crackling

Hi!

I originally created a different post but the community moderator that tried to help me hasn't responded for days, despite of the mail I wrote him. I hope that is okay.

My problem:

While playing Arma 3 I noticed strange crackling/popping noises in the menu and in-game when there were a lot of background sounds. I found a video of someone else on YouTube who had the same issue:

Arma 3- Crackling and Popping Audio - YouTube

The crackling was also brought to my attention during video playback on YouTube at some occasions. Sometimes videos froze or turned black. I did not think much of it when I first noticed it. A few days ago, I remember having a "nvlddmkm.sys stopped working
and recovered" warning when the pc came back from sleep mode that I now recognize as another symptom of the issue. I also experienced multiple BSODs caused by nvlddmkm.sys a month or so ago that I suspected to be caused by faulty drivers. However, no BSOD
has happened to me ever since. Today I got another "nvlddmkm.sys stopped working" notification while I was watching a YouTube video.

When I googled the sound crackles, I read that there might be a connection to a latency issue with my drivers. I installed LatencyMon (Dpc Latency checker doesn't work with Windows 10). I let it run in the background while I continued playing Arma 3 and it
confirmed my suspicion. According to LatencyMon, the Nvidia Windows Kernel Mode driver, my old friend Nvlddmkm.sys, is causing the "buffer underruns". I attached screenshots of the LatencyMon results to this post. When I found out that the problem lay with
my graphics driver, I did a complete clean install of Windows 10. I turned off automatic driver updates and reinstalled all drivers manually from scratch. But the issue persisted. I even plugged in a different pair of speakers to see if my subwoofers were
failing but still no avail. The new speakers had even worse sound disruptions (strange low tone background noise eve though there was no sound input). I also updated my BIOS.

I also changed the processor minimum state to 100% in the power plan settings and entered
BCDEDIT /SET DISABLEDYNAMICTICK YES into an elevated command prompt. None of these fixes worked. I also booted the system up in safe mode, I could not reproduce the issue though, as I couldn't run LatencyMon, Microsoft Edge. I was unable to start any
app.

As advised by ZigZag, I made a system file check with the sfc /scannow command (issues found and repaired). CBS log here:

Dropbox - CBS.log

I also tested my GPU with Furmark. It completed a 30 Minute session on the 1280x720 preset without a problem.

Additionally, I tried an older GPU driver. That didn't fix the crackling and latency either.

I ran a Windows Performance Toolkit trace within 40 seconds of gameplay. I hope there is someone who could take a look at it and advise on how to further proceed:

Dropbox - newDESKTOP-MC0C4RH.10-20-2015.17-00-54.zip

Here is another trace recording a latency spike after coming back from sleepmode:

Dropbox - Sleep modeDESKTOP-MC0C4RH.10-20-2015.16-17-22.Standby_1.zip

I would be very grateful if you could take a look at these as I really don't have any more options. There is one more thing: I installed Arma 3 and LatencyMon on a different machine also running Windows 10. It showed almost exactly the same symptoms, including
the audio popping and the latency spikes. How is that possible?

Thank you for your help!

 

Have integrated sound card and Lan card ? Happen to add new hardware recently ? So you upgraded originally from another OS and did clean install of Win 10 ? Using HDMI to monitor try disabling HDMI Audio in sound properties or NVIDIA control panel. Updated all other system and hardware devices,like sound, Lan, etc.. ? Try reseating Graphics card and you said you uninstalled the drivers for Video cleanly, try this then reinstall them again http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html


What i am not sure of is this issue happened with only the new NVIDIA drivers, new hardware (possible video card or other), assumed happened only now in Windows 10. Could be conflict with another hard or it's drivers or settings on either.

 

Thanks for the answer. Yes, I originally had Windows 7 installed and upgraded to Windows 10. But I formatted my ddrive and did a complete clean install. I don't use hdmi to connect the pc to my monitor but a dvi cable. I didn't install any new hardware, the system is the same as when I first bought it. I will try disabling hdmi Audio as you suggested. I don't think it would help to use driver sweeper as I installed the GPU driver on a clean machine, would it? There was no graphics driver installed before. The same issue with the audio crackling also happened with an older Nvidia driver that Windows had installed uáutomatically (353.xx).

 

Your Welcome !
You are then in fact only using DVI and 1 monitor not HDMI ? Then disabling HDMI audio will not be there in sound properties or NVIDIA.Going to ask if you tried older drivers for NVIDIA. DDU software i mentioned is good to use when or if before you install newer or older drivers for the Video card. Meaning this did not happen from Windows 7 occurred with Windows 10 ?
Never answered about other system hardware and if you updated system and hardware drivers as when doing an upgrade and especially when clean installing it will remove some. BIOS is one thing, but not a system driver not something you may of needed or rush to.

 

Yes, I only use DVI. But I have HDMI Audio ouput ports installed. If i open the "audio devices" settings from the taskbar, there are
4 HDMI Output ports displayed. I didn't get your second question.

 

This is because the Video card has the HDMI ports, but if not hooked this way would not affect it in any way then. Go to sound properties in control panel playback tab is where you will see them, for you be down red arrow and not plugged in.As it would be different with HDMI plugged into monitor then.

 

Yes, I disabled them all. But sadly it didn't help. I still had the sound crackle.

 

As said using DVI so will be nothing there as DVI does not carry audio. What sound card are you using integrated or PCI slot card and also Lan card (network card) ?

 

I am using a Realtek ALC1150 chip on my motherboard. My network Card is a Killer e2200 Gigabit Ethernet Controller. Running LatencyMon, I just noticed that the Killer Lan Driver causes extreme latency issues while surfing (21ms response time). I will try to reinstall it.

 

That did not help either. Different drivers seem to cause the latency issue for me, nvlddmkm.sys, Killer Network driver, storport.sys. That leads me to the conclusion that this is probably hardware related.

 

These latency issue happen even when not on internet correct ? Game you mentioned though i believe does play only online, Arma 3. Read these issues can be caused by network adapter. When reinstalling Network adapter did you mean it is a slot card you took out and put back or it's drivers you reinstalled ?

How about the Realtek have you tried updated those drivers as i know there has been new ones for them recently.

Where did you see issues shown for storport.sys which i am not familiar with but this is what i read.....

In addition to the SCSI Port driver, Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and later versions provide Storport (storport.sys), a storage port driver that is especially suitable for use with high-performance buses, such as fibre channel buses, and RAID adapters

What did you see about network card was there a mention of it's driver as like the NVIDIA.
Right either hardware conflict or it's drivers conflict or IRQ conflict (not too familiar with this, but a possibility)

Anyone upgrading to a new OS should always make sure to update all system drivers, chipset software drivers, controller drivers, check manufacturer's site and motherboard site for Windows 10. With certain other hardware you can also try those sites, like NVIDIA. Sometimes may have to use older drivers to try to resolve it.

Is issue since Windows 10, if so something is possibly conflicting or not fully compatible too.

 

Unless you have a digital output sound system you will have issues.

 

Elaborate for me Gary, mean optical output or coax out from sound card ?