[SOLVED] Audio crackling and popping with high DPC/ISR latency - seemingly caused by dxgkrnl.sys and nvlddmkm.sys. FIX: I updated the BIOS.

[Duskitty]

Hi all. I've been having this issue for about a year where occasional pops, crackles, and static can be heard while sound is playing through my headphones (while listening to music, playing a game, watching videos etc).
This started happening seemingly out of nowhere after a random Windows update in June 2021.
The crackling is largely just an annoyance, but I've noticed it seems to cause issues with my external capture card Elgato HD60S. After about ten seconds of transmitting audio through my capture card to my PC, the audio begins to lag and stutter, increasing in severity until I can no longer hear audio from my capture card at all. Others can hear this lagging (for example, when I'm livestreaming).

The crackling and latency also seems to be related to sleep mode somehow - when my PC first boots up or restarts, the issue is gone, but after putting it in sleep mode for a while (i.e putting it in sleep mode for the night) the issue pops up. I'd rather not either leave my pc on 24/7 or restart it every time I use it just to be rid of this annoying issue.

This has persisted through a clean install of Windows and a mostly new build (my current CPU, SSD, and motherboard are all new, while my RAM, PSU, and GPU are roughly 2-3 years old and were used in my previous PC build). I suspect my NVIDIA GPU might be the cause of it, as running LatencyMon and xperf trace show high DPC and ISR latency from dxgkrnl.sys and nvlddmkm.sys, with occasional latency spikes from storport.sys, ndis.sys, Wdf01000.sys, and ntoskrnl.exe.

Fixes I've tried which didn't work:

• disabling Fast Boot in Windows power settings (seemed to work for about a day or so, then the crackling came back)
• changing the power plan settings to High Performance
• disabling my wi-fi adapter
• updating drivers
• doing a clean install of Windows
• installing ASIO4ALL and changing the buffer size of my audio drivers

My specs are as follows:

Operating system: Windows 10 Education Edition 64-bit, version 21H2
Motherboard: GIGABYTE Z690 UD DDR4
CPU: Intel i5-12600 3.3GHz
GPU: GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1660 Super 6GB
RAM: G.Skill NT 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2133
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2TB M.2 NVME SSD
Power supply: be quiet! Pure Power 11 CM 700W

Speccy link: http://speccy.piriform.com/results/ellfGkY14jbeecj14Ws74TS

I've attached the LatencyMon report and the SysNative report to this post, as well as a link to the zipped trace.etl file: trace.zip

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[cwsink]

Hi Duskitty, welcome to Sysnative :)

Looking at the speccy it suggests you're running the original BIOS for your motherboard. Alder Lake motherboards are likely to be getting BIOS updates for months (if not years) to come to work out compatibility/stability/performance issues. I'd recommend updating to the latest (F7a) from here, assuming the system is stable while in the BIOS settings menus. Go back into the BIOS settings menus after updating, load default (or optimized) settings, and then Save & Exit. That should get rid of any bad settings that might survive the update. Then see if you can reproduce the audio issues.

 

[Duskitty]

Hi cwsink - thanks for the welcome and the advice (and sorry for the late response).

I've flashed my BIOS to the latest version and the issue seems to be fixed, or at least significantly reduced. I'll update if the issue persists further, but so far, all seems well.

 

[cwsink]

No worries. I was hoping it had gone so well that you were too busy enjoying your very nice build. :) Please do let us know if the issues return. Good luck!

 

[dpfranz]

I've had problems with pops for years and years. Often or always involves nvlddmkm.sys, from looking at LatencyMon. This thread is marked as "SOLVED." What was the solution?

 

[xilolee]

I've had problems with pops for years and years. Often or always involves nvlddmkm.sys, from looking at LatencyMon. This thread is marked as "SOLVED." What was the solution?

The OP updated its BIOS.