Windows 10: Audio Popping Issues - Potential Cause Determined

This is not so much a help thread, but a general discussion question related to audio drivers and potential Realtek popping causes and I would like discussion instead of assistance here. If I later do my driver update and the issue is not fixed, I'll post a request for help again.

I for a while had no idea what it was, but I have been holding off on advice regarding updating my Realtek Audio driver for a bit because I wanted to try to figure out what the cause of my issue was. And I think I finally figured it out.

This came about when I went for a solid two or three weeks without having any issues, then went to do some highlights on a channel I volunteer for as an editor on Twitch. Two days later, I noticed my computer lagging. Thinking I might be on to something, I rebooted without updating the sound driver. Yesterday, after running for a couple of days, I loaded a live Twitch stream for a little while and then monitored, and sure enough, I am having DPC latency again even with my Chrome browser not running (only Firefox), which means the issue wasn't being caused by Chrome itself. So I think the cause for DPC latency is today's Twitch player and conflicts with Realtek audio driver version 6.0.1.8228 - and if not that, it could very well be something else, but it's most definitely the Twitch player causing it. Because it happened after using the highlights area for Twitch VOD creation, and again on a live stream, so it doesn't matter if it's live or taped. I'm not sure if Youtube causes the issue, but I have been using my laptop for Youtube lately and have not completed such a test to see if the HTML player itself is to blame.

To back up my theory, I was using Twitch immediately after one of my reboot scenarios and, it so happens, within two hours of booting the clicks and pops were happening. After two hours following a reboot. So after thinking back to that, I'm pretty sure the player is the cause.

I'm going to reboot again today in order to have a clean environment for something later, then I'll see about running Twitch again immediately to see if I can trigger a fast latency in a day or two. That would for me all but confirm that the Twitch player is causing the error. What I am curious about is whether anyone else knows about the Twitch player causing issues with older drivers. I'm going to try this again after updating the driver to see if it is fixed. I also want to know if anyone knows of issues with the HTML5 player and whether something might need to be updated regarding that as well in addition to the sound driver. Again, this is general help, not specific for me, as I think this discovery could help other people besides myself.

(As a side note, my music is currently not on this computer, so I have not tested iTunes. I know gaming audio works fine though, and I had no issues for a long time playing games for a couple of weeks.)

:)

 

Determine the HDA Realtek driver needed for your Audio

First post updated:

1. PowerShell script has been updated to version 1.2 (see Release Notes) and
2. Added a new script to Check Audio device compatibility with an HDA Realtek driver

Any comments and/or suggestions are most welcome!

HTH. *Smile
Dimitri

 

method to determine exactly what caused a particular update?

Two suggested articles from Microsoft....

• Fix Windows Update errors
• Troubleshoot problems updating Windows 10

Whether you find the exact cause will determine the level of troubleshooting you go through.

 

Determine the HDA Realtek driver needed for your Audio

Nice update to the 1st Post Dimitri.......

Thanks,

KB.