Crackling audio at random times

[Aranath]

I've had an issue with getting random crackling noise from my Deck. It first happened literally when I turned it on for the first time and the initial opening jingle came out all crackly.

It seems to happen randomly but particularly when playing Elden Ring, although I have noticed in other games too. My initial thought was that the speakers were defective but it happens when I have headphones connected to it too.

I've tried searching to see if other people are having a similar issue but I'm not finding much, which makes me wonder if my unit is defective and needs to get RMA'd.

Any thoughts?

[Nanashi]

Gerowen eredeti hozzászólása:

So last night I enabled developer mode, disabled the wifi power management and played Final Fantasy 7 Remake: Intergrade for about 7 hours and didn't have the issue one time. This may have been the issue, and from the description next to that option, it may only affect people who connect to 5Ghz networks. Thanks for the tip!

Doesn't work for me unfortunately.

[76561198870432598]

Hi all, we just bumped Preview OS (version 3.4) with an audio driver fix. If you've been running into the suspend/resume audio issues with the built-in speakers or the headphone jack, can you please test this and let us know if you are still running into issues.

Please include as much relevant information as possible.

[Winnie]

New preview update from Valve that fix it supposedly:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1675200/announcements/detail/5201125680698748300

Fixed an audio driver bug that could lead to on-board audio crackling in some situations

LOL

[Gerowen]

Winnie eredeti hozzászólása:

New preview update from Valve that fix it supposedly:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1675200/announcements/detail/5201125680698748300

Fixed an audio driver bug that could lead to on-board audio crackling in some situations

LOL

That's good to see. I'll probably wait for it to hit stable, but hopefully it fixes the issue.

[Winnie]

Significant Otter eredeti hozzászólása:

Hi all, we just bumped Preview OS (version 3.4) with an audio driver fix. If you've been running into the suspend/resume audio issues with the built-in speakers or the headphone jack, can you please test this and let us know if you are still running into issues.

Please include as much relevant information as possible.

I don't know if it fix the crackle caused from the suspend/resume because that didn't happened to me, but it doesn't fix the ramdom audio crackle that I have every 15 minutes or so in any game for 1-2 seconds. If I disable the "WiFi Power Management" it gets fixed.

[Blinky13]

Was also having this issue (crackle unrelated to sleep). Went from affecting Bayonetta & Control, to getting pretty bad on lighter games like Slay the Spire as well, so I finally googled it last night & tried the wifi power management switch, & so far it seems to have resolved the problem completely. Thanks, Winnie!

[76561198870432598]

Blinky13 eredeti hozzászólása:

Was also having this issue (crackle unrelated to sleep). Went from affecting Bayonetta & Control, to getting pretty bad on lighter games like Slay the Spire as well, so I finally googled it last night & tried the wifi power management switch, & so far it seems to have resolved the problem completely. Thanks, Winnie!

Can you provide info about your Wireless network configuration so that we can try to reproduce the issue?

[Pepe Covfefe]

I get crackling audio when playing final fantasy 11

[Winnie]

Blinky13 eredeti hozzászólása:

Was also having this issue (crackle unrelated to sleep). Went from affecting Bayonetta & Control, to getting pretty bad on lighter games like Slay the Spire as well, so I finally googled it last night & tried the wifi power management switch, & so far it seems to have resolved the problem completely. Thanks, Winnie!

Glad that it worked! :D

Significant Otter eredeti hozzászólása:

Blinky13 eredeti hozzászólása:

Was also having this issue (crackle unrelated to sleep). Went from affecting Bayonetta & Control, to getting pretty bad on lighter games like Slay the Spire as well, so I finally googled it last night & tried the wifi power management switch, & so far it seems to have resolved the problem completely. Thanks, Winnie!

Can you provide info about your Wireless network configuration so that we can try to reproduce the issue?

What kind of information exactly do you need about the network configuration? I will help if i can.

[Gerowen]

Significant Otter eredeti hozzászólása:

Blinky13 eredeti hozzászólása:

Was also having this issue (crackle unrelated to sleep). Went from affecting Bayonetta & Control, to getting pretty bad on lighter games like Slay the Spire as well, so I finally googled it last night & tried the wifi power management switch, & so far it seems to have resolved the problem completely. Thanks, Winnie!

Can you provide info about your Wireless network configuration so that we can try to reproduce the issue?

I'm connected to a 5Ghz WiFi network at my home. The WiFi channel width is 80 MHz. There are no other 5Ghz networks within range of my house, and the only other network available at all is my own 2.4Ghz network used for older devices. The security type is WPA2. What happened for me is that in certain circumstances (Death Stranding is particularly bad for it) the audio would cut out occasionally during gameplay. These audio cuts kind of stutters for a couple seconds every now and then. If using the built in speakers, or a pair of wired headphones plugged into the 3.5mm jack, it was barely noticeable. I did notice it, but it wasn't nearly as jarring. But if docked and using my TV as the audio output device, where the audio becomes a digital signal sent over the wire, when the audio cut out happens the TV really doesn't like that digital signal being interrupted so the cut out becomes much more noticeable and can even cause it to produce static/crackling for 5 seconds or so as the audio cuts in and out.

Disabling the WiFi power management in developer options seems to have fixed it for me. I have not tried retesting it with WiFi power management enabled since the latest stable update to Steam OS (3.4) which makes mention of this issue in the patch notes, but I will try to test it this evening.

[76561198870432598]

Gerowen eredeti hozzászólása:

Significant Otter eredeti hozzászólása:

Can you provide info about your Wireless network configuration so that we can try to reproduce the issue?

I'm connected to a 5Ghz WiFi network at my home. The WiFi channel with is 80 MHz. There are no other 5Ghz networks within range of my house, and the only other network available at all is my own 2.4Ghz network used for older devices. The security type is WPA2. What happened for me is that in certain circumstances (Death Stranding is particularly bad for it) the audio would cut out occasionally during gameplay. These audio just kind of stutters for a couple seconds every now and then. If using the built in speakers, or a pair of wired headphones plugged into the 3.5mm jack, it was barely noticeable. I did notice it, but it wasn't nearly as jarring. But if docked and using my TV as the audio output device, where the audio becomes a digital signal sent over the wire, when the audio cut out happens the TV really doesn't like that digital signal being interrupted so the cut out becomes much more noticeable and can even cause it to produce static/crackling for 5 seconds or so as the audio cuts in and out.

Disabling the WiFi power management in developer options seems to have fixed it for me. I have not tried retesting it with WiFi power management enabled since the latest stable update to Steam OS (3.4) which makes mention of this issue in the patch notes, but I will try to test it this evening.

Just so I'm on the same page here, you're saying that it is mainly on External (HDMI/DP) that you are still experiencing the dropouts, and they are better when disabling WiFi power management?

Right now I am mainly looking at flushing out the internal audio dropouts/crackle as that is the driver that we updated with this most recent fix. We are looking at the display out issues as well, but again this most recent fix would only be internal.

[Blinky13]

My wifi config is the same as Gerowen's - 5ghx, 80mhz. The crackle was present handheld, but much worse on a tv via hdmi, sound would drop out completely for a few seconds, frequent crackling. Death stranding was not good, but Control was the worst. I applied the update yesterday, & noted that it turned wifi power management back on, but the sound issue seems to be gone for now. Played Control handheld & tv with no problems last night & today.

[Tycho]

Update on the power management tweak:

While it does seem to be reduced in frequency and duration, I just had a bit of crackle in Persona 5 Royal while doing basically nothing. This is also on the new OS version too.

It's also worth noting that both the tweak and the OS update have had zero effect on the "crackle after sleep" bug, which I OCCASIONALLY get when I wake up the deck after putting it to sleep mid game.

So far, disabling wi-fi seems to be the only sure way to eliminate the random crackle (although that has no effect on the "crackle after sleep.")

[Gerowen]

Tycho eredeti hozzászólása:

Update on the power management tweak:

While it does seem to be reduced in frequency and duration, I just had a bit of crackle in Persona 5 Royal while doing basically nothing. This is also on the new OS version too.

It's also worth noting that both the tweak and the OS update have had zero effect on the "crackle after sleep" bug, which I OCCASIONALLY get when I wake up the deck after putting it to sleep mid game.

So far, disabling wi-fi seems to be the only sure way to eliminate the random crackle (although that has no effect on the "crackle after sleep.")

I've been working and whatnot and hadn't had a chance to thoroughly test everything yet, but the other day while playing Final Fantasy VII Remake: Intergrade, with the new firmware (3.4) and the power management disabled. I did get one momentary audio cut-out while docked. It didn't cause any crackling or scratching, and it only happened once instead of 3 or 4 times like what normally happens, so I'm not ruling out the possibility that it was just this game, but I'll try to sit down this evening and test Death Stranding for 30 minutes to an hour with the power management re-enabled.

One thing I also did was I went into desktop mode (pre 3.4 update) and unmuted the "Echo Cancel Sink" device because for some reason certain apps were defaulting to that as the output device regardless of my system setting, which meant those devices had no audio with that device muted.

[Gerowen]

Significant Otter eredeti hozzászólása:

Gerowen eredeti hozzászólása:

I'm connected to a 5Ghz WiFi network at my home. The WiFi channel with is 80 MHz. There are no other 5Ghz networks within range of my house, and the only other network available at all is my own 2.4Ghz network used for older devices. The security type is WPA2. What happened for me is that in certain circumstances (Death Stranding is particularly bad for it) the audio would cut out occasionally during gameplay. These audio just kind of stutters for a couple seconds every now and then. If using the built in speakers, or a pair of wired headphones plugged into the 3.5mm jack, it was barely noticeable. I did notice it, but it wasn't nearly as jarring. But if docked and using my TV as the audio output device, where the audio becomes a digital signal sent over the wire, when the audio cut out happens the TV really doesn't like that digital signal being interrupted so the cut out becomes much more noticeable and can even cause it to produce static/crackling for 5 seconds or so as the audio cuts in and out.

Disabling the WiFi power management in developer options seems to have fixed it for me. I have not tried retesting it with WiFi power management enabled since the latest stable update to Steam OS (3.4) which makes mention of this issue in the patch notes, but I will try to test it this evening.

Just so I'm on the same page here, you're saying that it is mainly on External (HDMI/DP) that you are still experiencing the dropouts, and they are better when disabling WiFi power management?

Right now I am mainly looking at flushing out the internal audio dropouts/crackle as that is the driver that we updated with this most recent fix. We are looking at the display out issues as well, but again this most recent fix would only be internal.

The drop-out frequency didn't seem to be any more or less common when docked, it's just that it became a lot more noticeable because instead of a half second stutter in the audio, there was scratching/crackling/static when docked and they happened, so they were much more notice-able and jarring when docked.

That said, I just played "Death Stranding: Director's Cut" for about 2.5 hours with the wifi power management re-enabled and had zero issues whatsoever. This isn't necessarily conclusive because even though it happened most of the time, there were occasions where I could play for long stretches of time without issue, so it's possible the issue may still arise, though I'm hopeful because "most" of the time it would happen within a half hour or so of playing.

Now also, since we're on the topic of WiFi, it's worth mentioning that my controller (Microsoft brand XBox Series controller) died about a half hour into my test session just now and I had to hard-wire it to keep playing because I didn't have any batteries on hand to put in it. "If" the WiFi and Bluetooth run on the same card and "if" hard-wiring my controller has any effect on whether or not I have the audio issue, then this might be a variable. I don't think this would have any effect though because when I was hard-wired the Bluetooth was still on the controller was still showing up as "Paired", so it might have still been running over Bluetooth and just charging over the USB-C cable.

It's also worth mentioning that I have a second gaming PC, a desktop with an FX 8370 CPU and an RX 480 GPU, that runs Debian Testing (Bookworm) with Gnome, and has never had this audio issue with any game whether it's a Steam game running via Proton, an Origin game running via Bottles, etc. Now to be fair, it also doesn't have a WiFi card, so that eliminates the thing that seems to be causing the issue on the Deck, but I thought I would mention it since this leads me to believe it's something specific to Arch/SteamOS or the drivers for the Steam Deck hardware, and maybe not necessarily Linux or Pulseaudio since my Debian desktop does great.

Anyway, with the WiFi power management re-enabled and running the latest stable SteamOS firmware (There was another update today to fix regressions), at least so far, the issue seems to be fixed. I'm going to play some more later tonight and if I encounter the issue any more, I'll post here again to let you know. Thanks for listening and working hard to care of us, :-)