Windows 10: Music and Videos stutter when playing back

Hello all,

This has been an issue that has been going on for quite some time now. It is weird because it seems to be pretty inconsistent as to when the issue happens. I will do my best to describe my issue.

When I listen to spotify there is a stuttering noise, like a CD skipping. When I watch videos on youtube the sound stutters as well as the video sometimes. I have tried to reconcile this issue for quite some time.

Last week I finally decided to upgrade my HDD is a SSD (BEST DECISION EVER). I decided to venture out and clean install Windows, and I succeeded. All of the HP crap is gone. However this issue has been going on for about a year and half now and it continues even on the fresh install of windows. This leaves me to believe that it is a hardware issue or a driver issue somewhere. My computer is 5 years old, so it very well could be hardware related. Although it runs damn good for a 5 year old computer, especially with the SSD.

I will throw this in the mix as well, I use Unity, Eclipse, Unreal Engine, and play games without any of these stuttering issues. So I am stumped as to what to try. Does anybody have any ideas?

Thank you all in advance!

HP Pavilion dv6-6c35dx
A8-3520m with HD6620g Graphics

:)

 

Can't play videos or music of any type following latest W10 upgrade

The PC is a Dell XPS 8700

The file appears to load, if it's a video the first scene starts to play but hesitates I think as soon as sound starts it then stutters and gradually moves on. If a music file there is a click like a scratch on a vinyl disc used to give and a phrase (bar)
may play then another click and so on but basically it doesn't play. In Groove music it continues to stutter, in iPlayer one click then nothing. I have tried the default video player and also Quick Player, Media player. I have tried to use my Video creation
package and this stutters in the same way. The problem therefore appears to be with general play back through any application.

I am loathe to uninstall the update as I'm sure there will have been some security fixes.

Please advise.

 

Can't play videos or music of any type following latest W10 upgrade

The PC is a Dell XPS 8700

The file appears to load, if it's a video the first scene starts to play but hesitates I think as soon as sound starts it then stutters and gradually moves on. If a music file there is a click like a scratch on a vinyl disc used to give and a phrase (bar)
may play then another click and so on but basically it doesn't play. In Groove music it continues to stutter, in iPlayer one click then nothing. I have tried the default video player and also Quick Player, Media player. I have tried to use my Video creation
package and this stutters in the same way. The problem therefore appears to be with general play back through any application.

I am loathe to uninstall the update as I'm sure there will have been some security fixes.

Please advise.

 

Depends on what you are using to connect to the Internet. Wifi can cause stuttering if the network band is overlapped with others in the same channel. Could be that the stream is throttled on the other end or the server it is on is heavily saturated with traffic. If you connect via wired connection and only that one computer is having issues, you need to rule out any applications running in the background, along with what speed you are connecting to the Internet.

 

I am fairly confident that it is not a throttling from the router, I have lived in 3 different places and been on MANY different Wifi connections and the problem persists. Even through ethernet it remains an issue. I think I have narrowed it down.

When my computer was about 6 months old I had a BSOD issue cause by my network adapter driver. A few days ago I started investigating this issue, and have looked for updated drivers for my wifi adapter.I have not been able to find one that was meant for windows 10.

However, I decided to download some of my music on Spotify and turn my wifi off and see what happens. I downloaded some songs and let it play with wifi on and it was stuttering quite a bit (even with them being downloaded). While that was going on i turned my wifi off and it instantly stopped. I repeated this process several times and even listened for about 15 minutes without an issue. I think my wifi adapter driver is bad and I do not know where to find it for windows 10. I have a driver for older versions of windows. I couldn't find the right one on the realtek site.. Any thoughts?

Realtek RTL8188CE 802.11b/g/n

 

Here is a link with a video of the issue I am having. Notice when wifi is toggled off the issue stops.

VID_20170710_231013.mp4 - Google Drive

 

I would run LatencyMon while playing Spotify with WiFi ON. Mine shows no issues while playing Spotify with WiFi ON after running a full song and go to next song. I also use a Bluetooth mouse on top of the WiFi.

 

The DV6 laptop is a older unit that could be causing it. If you just want to be able to listen to spotify, you may want to use an amazon dot or Echo. The dot is cheaper and right now Amazon does have a sale going on for prime members. Your laptop is still a great laptop, but over time with the aging of the CPU and RAM, problems can occur. Try pulling the RAM and reseat. Also you may want to run a system test that checks RAM, etc.

Being that Windows 7 was standard, you may want to go back to 7 and not use 10 to see if the problem goes away. If it does, then a clean install of 10 and try the tool that was mentioned in post 5.

 

TheVeterans,







One photo is with Wifi on(Bottom) and the other with Wifi off(Top). I see this gives us some info as to what is causing the latency. There is some terminology in here I am not familiar with. What do you think? What is the next step?

 

Not familiar myself too, but that network driver interface is definitely the issue there. As you can see on mine, it's the same thing that gives the largest latency. However mine's not enough to cause dropouts/crackling with audio. In my opinion I would try to find a different driver version for your WiFi and see if that helps with the audio latencies

 

Again try the machine with Windows 7. If you do not have a spare 2.5" drive, then you may have to use the SSD that is already installed and install Windows 7 to see if it goes away. If it does go away, then install 10 as a clean install all updates, no installed security software, no background programs, just running Spotify to see how it rates. If it rates fine on Windows 7 but not Windows 10, either just use Windows 7 on that laptop or run 10, but use a Amazon Dot to stream music from Spotify.

 

I'm curious, what is the driver date and hardware id for your Realtek Adapter. It's probably a long shot, but we might can find a newer win7 or Win8 driver you could try.

 

Yeah that is what I have been trying to do lately. Although, the driver does not appear to be as far out of date as I thought. I have looked on realtek's website but have not found anything. I found a driver for an RTL8188EE, but I wasn't sure if it would work since mine is RTL8188CE. I have seen some drivers on other websites, but I am not sure if they are trustworthy, they also do not show support for W10.
.



I am honestly considering just buying a a really small usb wifi adapter and disabling the internal in the device manager. They are fairly cheap, if i need a fast connection I usually plug in ethernet anyway. The noise drives me nuts.

Also, I honestly would rather not go through the process of clean installing windows 7. I do not know my product Key, it rubbed off the bottom of my laptop. I know there is other software I can use to get that key. I honestly like windows 10 and want to find a way to get my system working on it. I am almost 100% sure using a usb wifi adapter with the internal one disabled would fix the issue. I just wanted to try and get it working as it should before i go spend money on something my laptop should already do without issue. Thank you all for your feedback, it has been very helpful. Please keep giving me suggestions if you have them.

 

Yea, I hear ya. I doubt your gonna find a newer one, but you could try an older one just to see.

Microsoft Update Catalog
about halfway down the page, the Win 8 ones (x32 & x64) from 7-11-2013


Edit:
Realtek RTL8188CE 802.11b/g/n WiFi Adapter Drivers Download for Windows 10, 8.1, 7, Vista, XP
These are the only other ones I see and they are older, but not as old as the ones on MS Catalog.
2nd and 3rd down (NOT the 1st one *Smile
I've used/tried drivers from there before, but I DO NOT use the setup.exe. I just extract them to their folder and install them thru Device Manager. So use at your own risk *Sad

 

Wow, I googled for days and never ran across this.. I'm definitely going to try these tomorrow and see what happens. Fingers crossed one of them works.