Audio Popping, Would S/PDIF Help?

[StillMotion]

Current Build:
9800 X3D
64 gigs 6000 MHz Ram EXPO
4070 TI
AsRock b850 steel legend wifi
Meshify C
I’m getting audio popping on sudden sounds (sometimes) or when sounds suddenly stop (pausing a video, muting, jump cuts, audio censoring for curse words, etc.).

I’m on Windows 11. I’ve tried different Realtek drivers (default Windows, Realtek website, motherboard forum versions, and OEM versions). This happened on a previous build too, but it was completely eliminated by using a USB DAC dongle.

On this new build, I’ve basically rebuilt the computer completely with new parts — the only thing that’s the same is the case. I also tried running just the motherboard/CPU/cooler outside the case with a fresh Windows install and it still happened.

Its happened for a while before, then stopped for quite some time (about 2 years), and recently came back on the same drivers. I’ve disabled auto driver updates via gpedit.

It happens with different headsets and on different ports.

Would investing in a proper DAC using S/PDIF as the connect bypass this? I don't know if the USB DAC not working means nothing else will either.

Build history:
9700k + Z390 Gaming X Rev 1 -> problem solved with Apple USB DAC dongle.
12700k + ASUS TUF/Prime A (tried like 5 different brand new ones, Prime and another series) -> problem persisted no matter what I did. Went mostly away on its own after a long time.
9800X3D + ASRock B50 Steel Legend Wifi -> didn’t show up until now.

Troubleshooting steps:
Tried Different outlets and power networks
Disabled fast boot
Disabled hibernation
Turned on and off XMP/EXPO
Disabled all power management options in BIOS (ASM, PCI-E Link Power Management)
Disabled HD audio in bios
Changed PCI-E slot speeds to gen 5 and 4 for GPU and SSD, respectively.
Completely reinstalled everything audio related, after completely cleaning driver store
Tried Audio Drivers from ASUS ROG Forum
Updated PD Firmware to version 007
Updated Intel Serial IO Driver and all applicable from support website, even used Armory Crate for updating everything
Disabled all sound processing from DTS and Realtek in Device manager
Disabled Wifi/Bluetooth
Messed with sound bits and sample rate/format
Tried USB Dac
Tried Generic Drivers
Reinstalled fresh to windows 11 from 10 (where the issue started)
Return motherboard for another of the same model and changed models (Previous motherboards were Z690 TUF Gaming D4 Wifi)
Updated Bios to latest
Tested in Safe Mode
Tried All Ports (USB and 3.5mm)
Installed Linux on USB and booted from that

 

[Vincent Kars]

Check the DPC latency: https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

 

[mcochris]

What external devices are connected to the PC? How are you getting sound out of the PC?

 

[Devast8nDiscoDave]

Try disabling power option in each hid usb device and hub in the device manager.

 

[wwenze]

when sounds suddenly stop

Hmm this problem should have been solved for at least 2 decades. Plus you say it happened on 3 computers. What software are you running?

One thing I can somewhat think of is common-mode voltage. Are you using the same amp all this while and what kind of AC mains connection do you have?

 

[phofman]

I do not understand this:

This happened on a previous build too, but it was completely eliminated by using a USB DAC dongle.

Troubleshooting steps:
...
Tried USB Dac

So did it do the pops with a different soundard on the new build, i.e. the USB device?

A soundcard can produce pops at start/end of the stream when designed improperly. It's typically not caused by software.

 

[AnalogSteph]

I’m getting audio popping on sudden sounds (sometimes) or when sounds suddenly stop (pausing a video, muting, jump cuts, audio censoring for curse words, etc.).

Wait a sec, those last two examples do not even involve stopping playback. That's odd. I wouldn't think that the audio codec would be so smart as to be actively monitoring for near-silence and muting the output (and honestly it shouldn't be doing that either, but in this day and age you just never know). I would take a good hard look at what comes next in the signal chain. Some BT speakers will do things like that to cut down on hiss at idle, for example.

Checking for rogue system-wide APOs couldn't hurt, mind you.

Ending the Windows Audio Quality Debate

A debate has been long raging in the audio community that Windows isn't fit for use in a high resolution audio system. Sceptics counterargued that bits are bits and Windows audio degradations are a figment of an over-active audiophile imagination. I decided to investigate this as I kept...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Also, when the ALC4080/4082 chips first came out, there were a lot of complaints about things like over-aggressive power saving which could also be related to what you're seeing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ASUS/comments/sf4tau/fixes_for_realtek_alc4080_sound_problems_on_asus

Disabled all power management options in BIOS (ASM, PCI-E Link Power Management)

And hopefully reenabled them when that did nothing. (Everyone should have a mains power meter like a Kill-A-Watt.)

Updated Intel Serial IO Driver and all applicable from support website, even used Armory Crate for updating everything

Which I hope you promptly disabled again afterwards.

 

[RandomEar]

Honestly: An SMSL SU-1 or similar cheap DACs with S/PDIF optical in are less than 80$, so I would just try them. Get the DAC from a seller with a good return policy and check it out.

That being said, I had a problem with my DAC going into a power saving mode after a long-ish period of silence, causing it to miss the first few seconds of audio again and again. I think I also had occasional pops when it muted/unmuted. I then added SoundKeeper to my autostart and haven't had any problems since. It simply keeps playing either a stream of zeros, or of alternating zero and minimum level samples to keep your DAC chip from going into standby. You can configure what it does. It's a good workaround for cases where the auto standby is the problem.

 

[SirkoSobaka]

Wow. That's a lot of effort. You even tried Linux... I've read about issues with 4080/4082, but I didn't have any on Asrock B650E Taichi.
But I had an issue with weird sounds from my powered speakers, too. Each speaker is powered with its own power cord, and they are connected to the same power strip as my PC. I could hear my computer through the speakers when connected to analog ports on the mobo, the PCIe sound card or the USB-C unbalanced DAC (USB-C to the DAC, RCA to the speakers). I could hear the mouse scroll, I could hear coil whine through the speakers, I could even hear my RAM overclock - seriously. For every 200Mhz I was going up, the noise was higher-pitched. It was very loud - 48db from 30cm away. And it was constant. Here's the sample:

Jan 4 at 11-48.m4a

drive.google.com

I knew it wasn't anything Windows, mobo or codec related since I had the same thing with a different Z170 mobo with Realtek 1220, which doesn't use the USB bus. That PC dual-boots W10 and Linux Mint. I also knew my speakers weren't defective since there was no noise when using the USB-C unbalanced DAC from the phone.
This was a ground loop. I found 2 ways to fix it:
1. Disconnected the ground cable in my power strip (extension cord) that the computer and the speakers were connected to.
2. Used the computer's optical SPDIF out. My speakers have that input, so I went straight from the mobo into the speakers. This removed the noise, too. There is a slight issue when I power my PC on after a power loss - a cracking sound coming from the speakers. But it's only a 1-time thing during the start-up. I plan to try the coaxial input to see if it's any different.

Maybe this'll help, but our cases are probably different. I really hope you can fix it. It's something that can drive you mad...

 

[StillMotion]

Another thing, the audio sometimes sounds louder than it's supposed to for a split second before it pops (usually happens in specific games, like Deadlock. When a tower goes down, the sound the game plays to signify the event kinda does a small blowout in my right headphone as it pops. Like if you used your lips to make a popping sound, but up to your ear, if that makes sense.) An example of my issues:

At 5 seconds, when the song is skipped, is when I experience a pop. Another easy way to replicate it is for me to spam press a keyboard press in windows explorer that doesn't correspond to anything (the windows sound that plays over and over but gets interrupted cause a loud popping).

Thank you guys for all your suggestions. BTW, I can hear the audio popping in recordings made via OBS as well.

Check the DPC latency: https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

Forgot about my troubleshooting with LatencyMon. The highest reported DPC routine execution time is 688.9 microseconds from nvlddmkm.sys (Driver Ver. 591.74) in 13 minutes. Highest measured interrupt to process latency is 513 microseconds. Average is 11 microseconds.

What external devices are connected to the PC? How are you getting sound out of the PC?

Steel Series Keyboard (back USB), Atom Amp with DT990 Pro headphones, mouse wireless dongle (front usb port, this also glitches out when I used the other port with a usb drive, especially if the casing is metal), 3.5mm mic (front), 1 DisplayPort and 1 HDMI port monitors (through GPU). I get sound either from Apple USB DAC through IEMs, or the MOBO 3.5mm jack through Atom Amp to Dt 990s. Annoyingly, I do have Nahmic stuff from AsRock on my PC. I disabled optimizations and the sound engine though.

Try disabling power option in each hid usb device and hub in the device manager.

Done, I sorted the list by connection and turned off all power saving on each USB hub and device.

Hmm this problem should have been solved for at least 2 decades. Plus you say it happened on 3 computers. What software are you running?

One thing I can somewhat think of is common-mode voltage. Are you using the same amp all this while and what kind of AC mains connection do you have?

I have currently running, NVIDIA app and broadcast, Nahmic Companion (unsure on removing it since it was auto installed when I changed mobos), process lasso, nextdns, and various game launchers. I think I heard someone mention vcm, and I think they pointed towards a ground loop isolator? I can't remember. The house is about 20 years old, but I'm not sure on the power setup front. Everything is connected to one Belkin powerstrip, other than the amp since the adapter is too big.

I do not understand this:




So did it do the pops with a different soundcard on the new build, i.e. the USB device?

A soundcard can produce pops at start/end of the stream when designed improperly. It's typically not caused by software.

I had the apple usb dac left over from my 9700k build that I upgraded from. The issues that popped up on that were completely mitgated so I figured it would work here as well.

Wait a sec, those last two examples do not even involve stopping playback. That's odd. I wouldn't think that the audio codec would be so smart as to be actively monitoring for near-silence and muting the output (and honestly it shouldn't be doing that either, but in this day and age you just never know). I would take a good hard look at what comes next in the signal chain. Some BT speakers will do things like that to cut down on hiss at idle, for example.

Checking for rogue system-wide APOs couldn't hurt, mind you.

Ending the Windows Audio Quality Debate

A debate has been long raging in the audio community that Windows isn't fit for use in a high resolution audio system. Sceptics counterargued that bits are bits and Windows audio degradations are a figment of an over-active audiophile imagination. I decided to investigate this as I kept...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Also, when the ALC4080/4082 chips first came out, there were a lot of complaints about things like over-aggressive power saving which could also be related to what you're seeing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ASUS/comments/sf4tau/fixes_for_realtek_alc4080_sound_problems_on_asus

And hopefully reenabled them when that did nothing. (Everyone should have a mains power meter like a Kill-A-Watt.)

Which I hope you promptly disabled again afterwards.

Thank you for that thread; I've seen in a reddit thread someone mentioned using Equalizer APO as a complete replacement. I can't remember if I tried it before tbh.

Honestly: An SMSL SU-1 or similar cheap DACs with S/PDIF optical in are less than 80$, so I would just try them. Get the DAC from a seller with a good return policy and check it out.

That being said, I had a problem with my DAC going into a power saving mode after a long-ish period of silence, causing it to miss the first few seconds of audio again and again. I think I also had occasional pops when it muted/unmuted. I then added SoundKeeper to my autostart and haven't had any problems since. It simply keeps playing either a stream of zeros, or of alternating zero and minimum level samples to keep your DAC chip from going into standby. You can configure what it does. It's a good workaround for cases where the auto standby is the problem.

I'll look into another DAC then. I've seen soundkeeper recommended from a thread from last year (found it: https://www.elevenforum.com/t/sound-popping-sound-when-audio-begins.36171/)

Wow. That's a lot of effort. You even tried Linux... I've read about issues with 4080/4082, but I didn't have any on Asrock B650E Taichi.
But I had an issue with weird sounds from my powered speakers, too. Each speaker is powered with its own power cord, and they are connected to the same power strip as my PC. I could hear my computer through the speakers when connected to analog ports on the mobo, the PCIe sound card or the USB-C unbalanced DAC (USB-C to the DAC, RCA to the speakers). I could hear the mouse scroll, I could hear coil whine through the speakers, I could even hear my RAM overclock - seriously. For every 200Mhz I was going up, the noise was higher-pitched. It was very loud - 48db from 30cm away. And it was constant. Here's the sample:

Jan 4 at 11-48.m4a

drive.google.com

I knew it wasn't anything Windows, mobo or codec related since I had the same thing with a different Z170 mobo with Realtek 1220, which doesn't use the USB bus. That PC dual-boots W10 and Linux Mint. I also knew my speakers weren't defective since there was no noise when using the USB-C unbalanced DAC from the phone.
This was a ground loop. I found 2 ways to fix it:
1. Disconnected the ground cable in my power strip (extension cord) that the computer and the speakers were connected to.
2. Used the computer's optical SPDIF out. My speakers have that input, so I went straight from the mobo into the speakers. This removed the noise, too. There is a slight issue when I power my PC on after a power loss - a cracking sound coming from the speakers. But it's only a 1-time thing during the start-up. I plan to try the coaxial input to see if it's any different.

Maybe this'll help, but our cases are probably different. I really hope you can fix it. It's something that can drive you mad...

Similar to yours, this problem of mine when it started years ago was much worse and had loud static when starting up my PC. After the windows login showed, the static went away.

 

[wwenze]

"Everything is connected to one Belkin powerstrip, other than the amp since the adapter is too big."
- Potential for common-mode issues

"had loud static when starting up my PC"
- This rules out software issues

So yes, use SPDIF. Optical preferred

My TV and its PC also has big noise problem. Best part is the PC is connected via HDMI while the TV connects analogue out to an amp. One key point is that this only occurs with a DIY PC with a suspicious Dell power brick but does not happen with a proper Dell nano PC. The amp is also some China brand class D amp. Point is, not every product has been tested to work in all conditions, and some brands test more than others.