Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Crackling/Static noise on PC

I'm using a Latitude E7450 by Dell, running Windows 10. After playing around with some configuration tweaks, I started noticing some static pops or crackling noise on the speaker when playing sound.

After searching around for some solutions, I found someone having similar problems and it seems to have something to do with the Sound settings. In the Properties page of the default Playback device, under the Advanced tab, there is a Default Format setting. I believe the default was set to CD Quality (16 bit, 44.1kHz). I've set it to the highest setting (24 bit, 192kHz) and it seemed to have caused the problem. I verified that this is the case because once I step it down to the 2nd highest setting (24 bit, 96kHz) all the noise just disappeared.

Nevertheless, I think your mileage may vary as I've read about other users changing to the highest setting to eliminate the noise. So if you happen to notice your machine sounding weird with occasional crackle and pop, try tweaking the settings mentioned above.