Crackling speakers

I have a Inspiron 15 5567 running Window 10 which has been having issues with a popping sound preceding any system event sound (new mail, etc.).  I tried your trick for switching from the Realtek driver to the "high definition audio device" which did, in fact, stop the popping sound.  The issue now, however, is that the audio has terrible quality and the volume is too low.  It sounds extremely flat.  I tried using the audio enhancements, but they made no difference.  I would appreciate any suggestions to fix this.  Thanks!

any suggestions

Looking through my notes about popping, as opposed to crackling, the only notes I have are for the Inspiron 7559 model, so these suggestions might not apply to the 5567 model.

 update BIOS.

Control Panel>Hardware and Sound>Sound>Playback>Right click on Realtek>Properties> Level> and set the level of the internal sub woofers to 80%.

Turn off the power management settings on the Realtek HD audio driver. To do this, you must tinker with the registry. The person who posted this solutionI broke it down into these steps:

1) press windows button + R 

2) type in 'regedit' into the prompt

3) click on HKEY_CURRENT_USER

4) go to REALTEK ---> AUDIO ---> RTKNGUI64 ----> PowerMgnt

5) on the right hand side of the window, find 'enabled' 

6) modify the value to 0

7) restart computer" -- posted by juicetin

Turn off the Maxxsense.

Option 2, reduce the speaker & system volume to 50 with Maxxsense on.

Besides the above mentioned, the power option did cause an effect, things gone worst when it's at power saving mode; it's almost fine when setting it to balance mode." -- posted by JW81

You can fix the audio popping issue by opening the Dell audio suite from the task bar and clicking advanced and then power management and making sure the slider for the power management auto shutting down audio is set to off." -- posted by MOOGLEYS  [screenshot of the power management in Dell Audio]

Note: not all models have the power management setting.

lower the sound

Hello. This thread is about crackling noise, so next time it would be better to start a new thread to discuss a different issue.

Look at the Recent Issues FAQ. Find "Inspiron (13") 53xx & 73xx" and read "Issue 2". Try the various suggestions in that section.

Then find "Inspiron 13" 5368" and read about Issue 1 and 2.

I have a Dell Inspiron 13 7378 and speakers started crackling 3 days ago. I followed jimco instructions dated March 14, 2017 and found that there was no crackles when using native audio driver. Visited Dell Assist to look for an update on the driver but found none. But I did find an update for the BIOS and installed it. Re-installed the Realtek Audio Driver. No more crackling :-).  

Thank you jimco!  My brand new Precision 7720 has a faint ticking noise from the left speaker every time I played audio or when Windows 10 produced a system sound.  Loudness of the ticking is independent of speaker volume.

I was about to disable all of the Dell services that I saw recommended on other blogs to solve this issue, but now I don't have to as your easy fix did the trick.

I'm surprised that after 2+ years this is still an issue with Realtek and Dell/Windows 10.  You'd think they'd have fixed these bugs by now, doesn't reflect well on Realtek.

Do you know the true cause of the noise, beyond just being a "driver problem"?

Thanks again!

for me its working, awesome,, i was facing this problem for past 8 months, i thought my speakers are gone,,,but now its working fine, m so happy,, Dell Inspiron 15R 5521

My laptop does not have power settings in my realtek registry

@Jim Coates​ sir it is tempporary solution but a permanet