G7 17 7790, Sound Issue

Reboot

Quickly tap F12 a few times

Run Dell Diagnostics

The problems you have, popping/crackling etc, are often reported problems.  There is no "one fix" for the problem except Wi-FI is a common problem.  Otherwise each has to be handled alone.  To see if its Wi-Fi caused, temporarily disable Wi-Fi then play an audio file on the PC and see if it still has the problem or not.

First step is to download and run the free Resplendence Latency Mon.  In many cases it will help in troubleshooting.  Latency Mon will overload you with data but its the best program of this type.  We use it in our recording studio systems.

Latency Mon

Hello.

I tested the diagnostic test in both the boot menu and Dell support assist, and in both cases no problem was found. Turning off Wi-Fi didn't help.

I will test in the Latency Mon in the afternoon.

Thanks.

Its not hardware (in 99% of the cases) so you can discard that.

Hi,

I hope it's a new laptop and wasn't exactly cheap.

I launched Latency Mon and here's the result.

Your system appears to be having trouble handling real-time audio and other tasks. You are likely to experience buffer underruns appearing as drop outs, clicks or pops. One or more DPC routines that belong to a driver running in your system appear to be executing for too long. One problem may be related to power management, disable CPU throttling settings in Control Panel and BIOS setup. Check for BIOS updates.

LatencyMon has been analyzing your system for  0:10:28  (h:mm:ss) on all processors.

Highest measured interrupt to process latency (µs):   41718,0

Average measured interrupt to process latency (µs):   10,483704

Highest measured interrupt to DPC latency (µs):       41647,40

Average measured interrupt to DPC latency (µs):       4,598859

Here is complete results

https://1drv.ms/w/s!AjZz8YNCbYud0cN9Knko4opw0RA75A?e=uUchHf 

power management set to high performance, but I couldn't turn off CPU throttling, and I couldn't find this option in Bios.

Thanks

Two items stick out from the Latency Mon results.  Firefox and Dell Diags.

Do not have anything open, such as those two, when you initially run it.  Check startup for items that are not needed and stop them, then run Latency Mon again.  For example I have Firefox but its only running when needed not all the time or when I test.

Get it to the "clean" state and then start adding apps one at a time to see which one(s) are causing the problem.

In your first test "ekrn.exe" was causing problems.  That belongs to ESET NOD32 and is a known cause of latency according to what I find doing a search.  I have a recording studio and some antivirus apps are known to cause problems and the built in Microsoft Defender does not so that is what I use (and Malwarebytes).

The second test with AV off the ekrn.exe was not an issue.

I was hoping something else would show in Latency Mon but it hasn't.  I'm currently field testing a new XPS 15 laptop with a 10th generation i7 CPU and it doesn't have any audio problems but will not pass the Latency Mon testing and I tried many things.  But Latency Mon is an often relied on app for those with computer based recording systems.  I also have an Inspiron 15 5577 gaming laptop that I bought for my recording studio.  This is slightly off subject but no matter what I did, I still had an occasional audio dropout and Latency Mon showed problems. The laptop came with an M.2 SSD and space to add a laptop hard drive or full size SSD.  I had a spare SSD so I installed it and made a dual boot system.  One the Dell disc image for regular PC use and the second Win 10 install for recording with only Win 10, needed device drivers and my recording studio software. This runs perfectly clean, no dropouts and Latency Mon is happy.  This worked for me but not an option for most.

Thus we are back to some app running or loaded and running in the background that is causing your problem.

Post what is in startup.  RIGHT click on the Start icon and then select Task Manager.  Click on startup tab and make a screen shot of the startup list.

Hello.


Today I tried to run LatencymMon on my old HP ProBook 4540s  with the i5-3210M Ivy Bridge and didn't go there, but I never had any problems with the sound. Now i have the i7 i7-8750H Coffee Lake in the new Dell.
Here is the startup screen
And here PDF of all Task Manager processes. https://1drv.ms/b/s!AjZz8YNCbYud0cQB48JPJ9I8-mFCvg?e=CyEjvw 

Still, and I think, I upgraded and replaced the original Toshiba SSD with a 1TB Corsair SSD, so I could use an original SSD that I am not currently using to do a clean install of Windows and test it, but I do not want to reinstall Windows lots of programs and games and everything to install is working for many hours.

There is a lot in the startup that could potentially cause your problems. 

Although it will take a while try temporarily disabling one item at a time, reboot and then see if they sound problem is resolved.  

Other than HP StatusAlerts, Intel Graphics Command Center, Realtek  all the others are suspect.

One other thing I notice, you have ESET and also Windows Security Notification which suggests both AV are enabled and that can cause problems.

Many programs set a startup but are really not needed.  For example there is no need to have AIMP in the startup. 

Hi,

I really don't know anymore, I tried to shut down everything that went without any result, today I did a clean install of Windows + drivers on the backup disk and still without a satisfactory result here are reports from Latencymon

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AjZz8YNCbYud0cQ4VXjn-4zn0s3rog?e=UxZsTA 

I tried some videos on youtube in Edge and still cracking sounds.

Thanks Vojta.

A clean install with minimum drivers and nothing else should work. That is what I had to do for my Inspiron 15 5577 gaming laptop so I could use it in my recording studio.   Perhaps more was installed than needed?

Disable the Internet (Wi-Fi?) and then run Latency Mon.

Play a song from the system drive.  Download a song to the system drive and then play that song. Does that play OK?

I only installed Windows and then made a Windows update that automatically installed the necessary drivers and it didn't help either. I only manually installed LatencyMon

Never mind trying to call Dell and possibly complain about the laptop.

Thanks Vojta.

Hi Vojta, 

Appreciate your efforts in trying those. Please do continue to use the system and we will followup to check if everything works fine.