Hissing and Cracking through headphones.

[blueapg]

I am new to the audio world and recently built my first PC and wanted a nice audio setup for streaming and what not.

I will list what I have here, DT990 Pros 250ohms paired with an Audient iD4 MK2 USB-c audio interface.

The headphones and AMP sound great... until they don't. The issue I am having is I will often hear cracking or hissing sounds randomly sometimes when I am playing a game sometimes when I am listening to music or sometimes even opening multiple tabs on my browser at once.

I tried to troubleshoot the issue myself but have had no luck so far. Any help would be greatly appreciated so I can fix it. Thanks so much in advance

 

[DVDdoug]

I'm not sure about the hissing but the crackling is probably caused by multitasking & interrupting which can result in buffer underflow. Something doesn't have to be using lots of computing power, it just has to hog the system for a few milliseconds too long, the playback buffer runs out of data before it's refilled, and you get a glitch.

So try to minimize the running applications and the background operations. (But your operating system is always multitasking.)

There is a FREE online book called Glitch Free about optimizing your computer for audio. It's really aimed at people doing audio production but it should help with playback too.

 

[blueapg]

I'm not sure about the hissing but the crackling is probably caused by multitasking & interrupting which can result in buffer underflow. Something doesn't have to be using lots of computing power, it just has to hog the system for a few milliseconds too long, the playback buffer runs out of data before it's refilled, and you get a glitch.

So try to minimize the running applications and the background operations. (But your operating system is always multitasking.)

There is a FREE online book called Glitch Free about optimizing your computer for audio. It's really aimed at people doing audio production but it should help with playback too.

Thanks for the response, I will check out that book and see if I can learn anything to resolve my issue.

 

[Dunring]

First thing I'd do is uninstall any onboard sound bloatware and let windows drivers handle them. Just use the software you need for the interface and no preinstalled sound apps or control panels.
If you go to device manager, bring up you USB ports and hubs and uncheck the power management tab box for each if it's checked.
Also at a command prompt you can make windows scan for corrupt system files and replace any with backups using:
SFC /scannow

 

[blueapg]

First thing I'd do is uninstall any onboard sound bloatware and let windows drivers handle them. Just use the software you need for the interface and no preinstalled sound apps or control panels.
If you go to device manager, bring up you USB ports and hubs and uncheck the power management tab box for each if it's checked.
Also at a command prompt you can make windows scan for corrupt system files and replace any with backups using:
SFC /scannow

I will do this as soon as I’m home later. Thanks for the help!