Audio Crackling

[Goku]

I've been having this problem where I am just playing the game or in a cutscene as normal but then a small little background sound pops up that sounds like pops or the crackling of a record player. I looked up all sorts of things but I still get this persistent issue.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

That's a sign your CPU usage is way too high during gameplay.

Go to in-game Settings > Audio and add some audio latency and see if that helps.

[Mr_Purple]

Check your system latency (LatencyMon, free). Could be a driver or app conflict or, if you are unlucky, a dying component. GPU on my laptop started dying back in the day and sound popping/crackling was the first symptom of this before artifacts started appearing. LatencyMon should show you exacltly which app is causing audio issues.

[mobucks]

Careful with some of those monitors. CPUMon is a similar program, and on default settings it ended up making my CPU temps go much higher and using 100% of the CPU because it was default tracking in real-time.

I have a similar audio issue but it's because of the headphone port I'm using.
Having a cellphone nearby also has caused similar issues for me in the past.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Originally posted by mobucks:

Careful with some of those monitors. CPUMon is a similar program, and on default settings it ended up making my CPU temps go much higher and using 100% of the CPU because it was default tracking in real-time.

I have a similar audio issue but it's because of the headphone port I'm using.
Having a cellphone nearby also has caused similar issues for me in the past.

Don't set such apps to real-time. Give them a refresh of around 1.5-5 secs. Usually 3 secs is good enough

[2PLY]

As other's mentioned CPU usage too high - can try changing priority in task manager.
(ctrl+shift+esc > details > RDR2.exe > r-click > set priority High)

Close anything else running in background, especially chrome.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Also helps to change Launch Options in Steam for RDR2 to include this...
-cpuLoadRebalancing -useAllAvailableCores -high -ignorePipelineCache