Audio stuttering/clipping/distortion *SOLVED*

[nathanddrews]

Problem:
Playback of any audio source results stuttering, clipping, and distortion. It is not constant, but it is frequent. Youtube videos, local videos, local music, games, everything.

Workarounds taken so far that have no impact:
Disabled multiple background processes (Windows update, search, superfetch, etc.).
Disabled all other audio input and output devices.
Uninstalled and reinstalled chipset drivers, audio drivers, video drivers (using specific and generic drivers).
Enabled high performance mode and ensured CPU min/max is 100% and no devices are allowed to sleep or save power.
Changed to each and every Windows sampling rate (16-bit 41kHz to 24-bit 192kHz).
Extended RAM burn/test (no problems reported).

Older parts, but newly built, clean install:
Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
4670K (stock)
ECS H87H3-WM mATX
4x4GB DDR3 1333
500GB 850 EVO SSD
GTX 570 2560MB
Onboard HD Audio chipset


I'm open to more suggestions. Pls halp.

 

[Ketchup]

Play with audio cables on the computer side and the speaker connection side and see if you can replicate the sound.

 

[nathanddrews]

Play with audio cables on the computer side and the speaker connection side and see if you can replicate the sound.

I will try that, thanks.

Last night I attempted a couple more things:

Disabled onboard LAN and audio in BIOS.
Installed a USB Sound Blaster X-Fi I had sitting around, but the distortion still returned. This isn't just audio either, it's like the keyboard, mouse, and controller inputs also get "wonky" and hesitate.
Disabled Intel SpeedStep in the BIOS - this actually seemed to fix the problem for a while, but not entirely. I need to test it more to be sure.

In the middle of all of this, my computer decided to install the W10 Creator's Update, so I'll probably have to revisit a few of the prior solutions.

The only other thing I'm going to try is disabling Intel Turbo in the BIOS. Since this is predominantly an emulation/gaming machine, I'm going to miss having that extra clock speed, but if I have to choose between stability and performance, I guess...

Maybe I'll see if I can find a cheap 1150 motherboard before totally giving up.

 

[Ichinisan]

Would you say it sounds like frequent stuttering / hitching?

My sister's Toshiba laptop has this problem with Windows 10 and not with Windows 7. Trying latest audio drivers didn't help. I don't remember if we tried to force Win7 audio drivers. If you find a solution, I'd be curious to know what it was.

 

[nathanddrews]

OK, so I tried a few more things that resulted in no improvement.

So I did a complete Windows 10 refresh (kept nothing) and the audio problem was gone. But THEN I plugged in my iBuffalo 6-button controller and the audio stutter returned! This is most certainly the culprit. When I unplugged the device, I got a Windows error related to the USB driver failing. In the Device Manager, I had a yellow exclamation next to one of my USB controllers (chipset controller not the handheld controller). Leaving it unplugged, I removed the iBuffalo device from the device list and rebooted. Audio is perfect.

Then I installed both wired and wireless Xbox 360 controllers and the audio issue did not come back after extensive testing. I also tried out my new EasyGet arcade buttons and still no audio issues.

Now this behavior did not exhibit itself when using the iBuffalo controller on my other computer for reasons that I can only speculate. For now, however, I'd mark this particular incident as solved. Thanks for the input!

 

[deustroop]

If you had added this iBuffalo 6-button controller to the hardware list in OP it would have been helpful.

 

[nathanddrews]