PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Help! Tech S.O.S (Off topic) Intermittent Crackle and Noise [Resolved]

Problem Statement:
Intermittent and random problems are the toughest to solve. I'm experiencing intermittent noise, static and crackle when I play any audio. The crackle will last for only a fraction of a second or so and the music will smoothly continue as if nothing happened. The crackle seems to be on top of (external to) the music as opposed to being in the music. The source of the music could be a Studio One track, an MP3 file being played by Windows Media Player or a YouTube video on the web. The crackle may happen only one, two or three times a day but if I happen to be recording my bass or keyboard it will throw me “out of the zone”. The crackle has happened once while I was recording and did not appear in my recording.


Background:
I recently made 3 major changes to my system.
1. I upgraded my i5 machine to an i9
2. BiaB 2023 UltraPak is now installed on an external drive; not on the C: drive
3. I upgraded from Studio One version 5 to version 6


With my older i5 machine I never experienced noise or crackle . . . ever.

Over the past couple weeks I’ve spoken to 2 Dell Tech Support engineers and 1 supervisor (all based in India) and although they are motivated to help me they are not audio engineers and seem baffled. They and I confirmed/installed the latest audio and Tascam drivers, disabled NVIDIA and set the power option to “High Performance” all to no avail.

I also notice a strange symptom that may be related. For no apparent reason, an F: drive Windows explorer window will appear unexpectedly even if BiaB is not running. The only thing on F: is BiaB. If I close this window, it will magically reappear at a later time. It’s as if this window wants to be active all the time despite me shutting it down.

Next Steps:
I’m thinking my next steps are
1. Solicit suggestions from this forum
2. Disconnect the F: drive for a few days to see if this helps
3. Contact Tascam (they have shown lukewarm interest to help on past questions)
4. Contact JBL
5. If required, re-contact Dell Tech Support again


There are smart people in this forum like Mario who solved my “M on the diagonal” bass panning issue so I’m hoping some suggestions will come in for this problem.

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

Check to see if the Tascam has an update. My Presonus equivalent crackles and pops when it wants updating.

...Deb

As some OSs open a window to a newly-connected external drive, that might point to the physical connection, or possibly a conflict issue with the drive. I'd be tempted perhaps to try it on a different USB port, or do as you say and remove it for a while to see if it changes anything.

Good idea Deb, this was one of the 1st things I verified.
According to their website, I'm up to date.

Thanks for the input Gordon.
I have disconnected the F: drive altogether to see if the problem goes away.

The Dell website has a utility application named the Dell Support Assistant. The application must be downloaded and installed onto your computer. The application scans your computer hardware and installed hardware drivers. The application then offers to install the latest verified version of any hardware drivers that are newer than what is installed on your computer.

Dell has become aggressive with testing and offering new hardware drivers to keep ahead of malware and Trojans. I'm finding motherboard bios and motherboard support chips are updated quite often.

It's possible the issue you're experiencing has an undocumented hardware driver fix.

Hey Jim, we are totally on the same page.
I have SupportAssist installed and I have used it to optimize/update my system.

My latest thinking is that the Tascam Interface may not be connected to the most ideal USB port. I have a USB 3.2 Gen 1, a USB 2.0 with Smart Power On, and a couple USB Type Cs. Hopefully it's that simple.

And as you alluded to, a complete virus scan wouldn't hurt.

Good info so far. My number one idea was already discussed, remove that F:\ drive. Hopefully you're able to hit your PC specs to find out the best USB port speed-wise.

If what you've done so far is not working maybe tweak the buffer size on the interface.

Your describe the problem well. Check you assignment of audio conversion rate: 44.1 kHz versus 48 kHz audio. You have a mismatch. They have to match on your PC application and on the audio device used.

"Windows explorer window will appear unexpectedly even if BiaB is not running. The only thing on F: is BiaB."

This likely related to either the faulty drive, which connects / disconnects (unlikely) or to your Power Management settings for USB which puts drive to sleep and then wakes it up, which sparks an idea about your Tascam.

Are your Power Settings set to Maximum Performance?
There is a setting in advanced Power Menu that deals with USB
It is named: USB SELECTIVE SUSPEND SETTING

If it is "enabled" try "disable" option to give full power to USB port, see if it solves at least one of the issues.

P.S. Try a different USB port.

Thanks Steve (your mamma named you well)

BiaB and the F:drive have been exonerated in this. I disconnected the external drive and the glitches still happen.

Regarding the buffer size, you didn't say which way to tweak. I'm thinking bigger is better. So I tried, 512, 1024 and 2048. Each setting produced the crackle. I'm currently running at 128 . . . and it just glitched. It seems like I'm able to get it to glitch easier now.

Also ran a full virus scan . . . squeaky clean.

Thanks Dan, but I'm not fully following your thought.

My sample rate is at 44.1 kHz as reported by my interface software. You can see this in my reply to Deb.

I see no 48 kHz anywhere.

Why do you say I have a mismatch?

What do you mean by my "PC application" and the "audio device"?

If PC application you mean Studio One, I believe Studio One grabs the sample rate from the interface software. And Studio One shows 44.1 kHz.

If PC application you mean Windows Media Player, I can't see how to display it.

When you describe "...Intermittent and random problems ... experiencing intermittent noise, static and crackle when I play any audio. The crackle will last for only a fraction of a second or so and the music will smoothly continue as if nothing happened." That screams audit conversion rate mismatch.

You tell you have looked everywhere, but have you?



In Win 11 you need to set Studio One to the same sample rate as your Taskam and as your Windows drivers for your Audio Card.

Go to the Win 11 Search and type "Sounds". You will see this. Is you audio card set to 44.1K or 48K?

PC Settings-->System-->Sound-->Advanced-->More Sound Settings

- Highlight your audio device
- Click Properties
- Go to the advanced tab.

This is the Windows settings that MusicStudent means by "PC application".

EDIT: Dang it Dan!!!! You replied at the same time....

I would have been quicker, but for all the typos I had to fix.

Hey Rusty, BiaB and Drive F: have been exonerated because I disconnected the Drive F: USB cable at the PC USB port and the glitches still happen. So we can't blame F:

You have a good idea about trying a different port. I inserted my printer USB cable into the USB port that has been connected to the interface. And inserted the interface cable into the USB port that has been feeding the printer. I sent a page to the printer and it printed fine. Then I fired up Studio One and played a song. The song played perfect with no glitch which is hopeful but says very little. It may take some time for the glitch to appear because it's an intermittent issue. Thanks for suggesting this . . . we'll see if it's a permenant solution.

OK Dan, I get now what you are saying. See below for my settings (44.1 kHz).
And if I hit "Test", I get the chimes thru the monitors.
Sorry for being slow.

Bass Thumper,
Your "power settings" should be set to Maximum Performance in audio recording computer. With the specs you got, if you don't have that set to Maximum, is like driving a Ferrari at 25MPH on highway.

Check in two places, Recording AND Playback.

Is this what you mean by "power settings" ?
If so, the Dell engineer suggested the High Performance setting a few days ago when I showed him the Tascam message shown above in the Setup Diagram.

PS> Your idea of swapping USB ports is still holding steady . . . no glitches so far.

OK Dan, here is the recording settings. These were default as I never changed them.
But keep in mind, the problem I'm having is with playback, not recording.
Nonetheless, it was good to verify everything is at 44.1 kHz as you said.

My advice, if it holds steady, ignore everything else until IF it starts acting up again.

Agreed.
I wonder if there is an easy to read reference manual for those of us new to the technical aspects of playback and recording of music on Windows PCs.

My approach to date is keep the default settings until they prove troublesome. Then make the minimum changes necessary to keep your system going. And if it ain't broke . . . don't fix it unless you really know what you're doing.

The funny thing here is that in my old i5 machine, I just plugged and played and for the most part it all worked.

If the "USB swapping" idea works longterm there must be a slight difference between the 2 ports despite the fact that Dell says they are identical. They're both USB 3.2 Gen 1

PS> Just heard a tiny glitch. If it doesn't get worse I can live with it.

You got to get used to your machine.

"there must be a slight difference between the 2 ports"
There might be HUGE difference in how they are routed, different chips, etc.

"I wonder if there is an easy to read reference manual for those of us new to the technical aspects of playback and recording of music on Windows PCs."

There was a guide, if I remember correctly from Sweetwater, that had all kinds of tweaks for audio computers.
But I would not touch anything if it is working right Your computer seems to be a power horse, I don't think it needs any deep tweaking besides "High Performance" that you already have set.

About your audio "glitches", try to narrow it down to physical things. Original cable? Properly grounded AC outlet? Believe it or not, in college we lived in old house with crappy outlets, I would get all kind of noises in my recordings. Then I would move to USB settings that I mentioned in advanced power settings. Try maybe yet another port.

--------
Truth be told. I was a big fan of Tascam... with their US-122 about 20 years back. But when time came to upgrade, nothing was right. Crackle pop thing. So I gave up and switched to more reliable interface.

OK, I finally found that setting. Wow, it's buried down pretty deep.

It was set to Enabled so I changed it to Disabled.

My audio is playing fine with this change but it will take some time to tell if it is a permenant fix.

Thanks, man, you are knowledgable in this area.

I wonder if Dell can remotely run a test on my USB ports. Not ever thinking about this before it seems to me that there are several attributes associated with every USB circuit.
What is the power level?
How clean is that power?
What is the data transfer rate?
How much jitter is on the data stream?
etc.

EDIT: There is crackle and stuttering. No worse than yesterday but it's still bad.
Of course we haven't ruled out the JBLs . . . but they are less than 2 years old.

#1 restart your machine, see if if issues go away.

stuttering is unlikely to do with speakers. You can try headphones to rule it out.

One simple thing to try is put your computer is "Airplane mode" (disable network adapter) and see if you get issues. WiFi and Bluetooth sometimes do not play well with audio recording / gear.


Also... There is a popular (and free) piece of software called latencymon (Latency monitor). While it has all kinds of parameters, it will give you a general idea of the most intruding processes. Two of the most common ones are Nvidea drivers and WIFI adapter (cant do much about these), but there might be some software crapware that came with your computer that is persistent enough to cause audio issues.


"I wonder if Dell can remotely run a test on my USB ports." - Don't waste your time. It's a very narrow issue. I doubt Dell people will be able to help with 3rd party hardware.

Rusty, you are a literal fountain of ideas.
Regarding machine restarts, I have been doing them on a semi-regular basis during this troubleshooting effort.

Yeah, my "JBL" thought was not my best. I agree it's a long shot.

I put my machine in Airplane Mode and switched the Tascam from a USB 3.2 Gen 1 port to a USB 2.0 with Smart Power port, returned my buffer size back to the default 256 samples, did a re-start, played a song in Studio One and with fingers crossed after one play thru the glitch happened.

My thinking on the USB port is that the 3.2 standard is newer than the Tascam and hence may not be fully compatible. But, no dice. But I wonder if the USB 2.0 with Smart Power is still too advanced for my "ancient" interface. This will be a question for Tascam if I can reach someone on Monday. Maybe it needs dumb power. And I understand that USB 4.0 is coming.

https://www.kingston.com/en/usb-flash-drives/usb-30

I'm going to hold off installing any more 3rd party software. Dell contacted me and wants to talk again. They are willing to supply me with a new machine but I think that is premature. I think there is still more troubleshooting for them, Tascam and me to do. I don't want to recieve another machine and still have this problem.

I'm beginning to think about the Realtek sound card.

It's a long thread, but have you eliminated a bad USB cable?
Intermittent USB issues can cause all of the symptoms mentioned.
I had this issue when I first got my 18i20, and it was because I used an inferior cable.

'USB port is that the 3.2 standard is newer than the Tascam and hence may not be fully compatible."
Highly unlikely.


You can press Alt+Ctl+Del, open task manager> Performance and just see if graph "spikes" when glitch happens.

I have seen strange behavior when interface older driver is being updated by a newer driver. The solution I found was to remove the driver all together and install fresh, going with the newest. Sometimes a "factory reset" of the interface (if there is one) solves issues.

If Marty is close by, you can try bribing him with a beer or a cake and ask him to bring his interface, that way you will have a better idea if it's the computer or interface issue.

Yes, this is a long thread. Intermittent problems are often complex.
Good idea, I have not elimitated a bad USB cable, although the cable worked fine in my older machine.

It's a USB Type B and I can cannabilize one from my printer to see if that makes a difference.

Thanks for the idea.

FWIW - I had a similar Intermittent Crackle and Noise problem with my music computer a year ago. I did a ton of investigations, gave up and took it to a computer store. They had it for three weeks looking for the problem. Finally they happened to stumble on it. While they were testing it the problem happened. It turned out to be an intermittent problem with the power supply. They said that just happened to me at the right place at the right time.

Just thought that I would pass this on.

Intermittent problems, especially those that happen far apart from each other, at very hard to pin point.

PS - they said that every time they tested the power supply all was well.

More good ideas. I don't see a factory reset on the interface but I can do a Ctrl-Alt-Del and look for spikes with my printer USB cable.

I had an idea on my treadmill this morning. Bypass USB, JBL, XLR and Tascam altogether and use headphones directly. So for the last hour or so that's what I've done. And so far no glitch. With each glitch-free song I'm slowly exonerating the sound card.

One thing is sure . . . there is a root cause(s) at play.

Thanks for joining "the party" Mario

It very well could be the power supply but so far my "headphone test" is showing no glitches which is exonerating the PS. If this good behaivor continues I think the problem is with either the USB cable, the USB ports, the Tascam or possibly the XLR cables or the JBLs or incompatibility somewhere. I know, the list is long.

Of course as a semi-last resort, I could re-connect my i5 computer and verify that that configuration still works fine. My i5 setup worked perfect last month.

Once everything is working right, PLEASE mark this thread as "Resolved" using the button in the first post.

This thread is a gold mine of ideas for people experiencing similar issues.

I just read this thread and made notes as I was reading. Almost everything in my notes has already been suggested, but here's my list:

Run Latency Monitor or DPC Latency Checker
Switch left and right monitors
Lubricate cable ends with DeOxit
Switch out cables one by one to rule out bad cables (since you just moved and reconnected them all)
USB cable not longer than 15'
Sound settings in Windows: make sure it is 44.1 and 16 bit
Check power supply
Sample rates must match in the Windows Audio settings
New computer = new OS, new crapware?
Run Tascam in USB 2 port, not 3

Preliminary Conclusions based on progress so far:
Do the simple checks for bad connections, above, and lubricate all cable ends.
Tell us what happens in the latency checking software
128 is too low a buffer for PLAYBACK on most machines! You can use it for recording, but bump it up to 256 or 512 for playback.

are any of your cables crossing or too close? i get an intermittent buzz when my speaker cables get close to the router ppower cables

Thanks Matt,
I haven't had a chance to address or even capture in the Exoneration Table all of yours and others suggestions.
With all the input it's been like drinking from a fire hose (which is a good thing).
But the table below tries to capture the progress made over the past few days.
If nothing else, this thread (and the embedded thinking in it) may be of use to others in the future.

As always, comments about this table are always welcome.

Good suggestion Bob.
The short answer is yes. My "studio" is small and I've got cables wire-tied in neat bundles. I'm relying on the insulation that is designed into the cables for shielding. Absent a special shielding of some kind I see no remedy to this.

Plus, I had no audio glitches with my "old" i5 setup and the cable layout hasn't changed.

FWIW, that's how I got into trouble in the first place; trying to use an old cable I had laying around .. a new (quality) 15' USB cable solved all my issues.
I told my best friend to do the same when he upgraded his interface .. get a new quality USB cable at the same time.

Focusrite (for all their good points) only includes a 3' USB cable .. that worked great, but I needed the interface further away and other old cables I had handy introduced the dreaded pops and distortion.
A new cable made my nightmare go away.

BT.
"my "headphone test" is showing no glitches"

That is very odd. So no funny stuff in headphones connected to Tascam?
Sure, sure?


Best move now would be to test it with i5 machine. If there are no issues, you will eliminate Tascam unit (cable and power supply) out of equation in finding the boogie man.
---------------------------

Something that might relate to you (or might not) . Last time I fought similar issues was because of Nvidea chipset. I have Thinkpad (Lenovo) and they, as Dell are pretty good in maintaining drivers, BUT that specific driver was not up to date on their site. Once I updated that specific driver, things became much more stable. So check if you have Nvidea or other graphics card.

Understood. My troubleshooting idea was to swap the cables as a 1st step to see if the problem followed the cable swap, and it did; see item 21.

My next move is to order a new cable.

For USB 3.x best make them not longer than about 8 feet.

Some new developments. I was able to capture the glitch as you suggested using Task Manager. Normally the CPU utilization ranges from 1 to 2% when playing music. The glitch caused it to spike to 40%.

Now one question is what does this mean?

PS> See item 20 in the Exoneration Table.

PPS> Any interest in starting the Rusty Thumper Institute for Advanced Troubleshooting and Audio Excellence?
We could have branch offices in Paris, Berlin, NY, London and Sydney

It's actually easy. Make sure no audio cables run parallel to power cables. You can bundle the audio cables, and you can separately bundle the power cables, but if they must be in the same location, make them cross perpendicular to each other. I have to add, though, that this is not likely to be your problem here.

item #20 on your list - JBL speakers.
They are a "one way" street game, I don't believe they could send signal back to PC causing spike at the time of glitch.

Please confirm that you don't have funny stuff happening in headphones plugged to Tascam. If you don't... that is the strangest piece of the puzzle.

In the latest Exoneration Table dated 4/16/23 Item #20 is "CPU Problem". Be sure to refer to the latest table posted as this is a dynamic spreadsheet and updated as new info is developed.

Item #10 talks about the headphones. So far, I have observed no glitches using headphones plugged into the computer. The Tascam has 2 headphone jacks which I have not yet investigated.

I only need about 3 feet.

"So far, I have observed no glitches using headphones plugged into the computer. The Tascam has 2 headphone jacks which I have not yet investigated."

Two items come to mind:

You should test headphones on Tascam, which would eliminate "speaker" issues if the glitch is heard.

I am just guessing here... You can hear audio from computer headphone jack while Tascam is connected and powered on? Running both Tascam and internal Realtek at the same time, or you are unplugging Tascam to listen from computer headphones jack?

I noticed your Dell (I assume a model XPS) has an internal sound card, the Realtek. Can you confirm that the audio conversion rate is set at 44.1K on this device also?

Don't want to be a broken record, but I have owned several Dell XPS machines for music making and the potential for mismatch was always possible. Also keep in mind that Windows updates can and will change these setting at times. So I am very familar with cracking audio noise when these are mismatched.

I run Win 11 on my current non-Dell machine with both external MOTU sound device (all things music making) connected to my audio monitors and an internal Realtek sound card to external PC speakers (just for Youtube and SoundCloud and other PC apps). The conversion rate can be different across different device pairs but must match within the same device pair.

Dan, yes, it is an XPS and yes with a Realtek sound card.

The audio conversion rates (as I understand them) are shown in post# 761832 and post# 761838. I don't know how to give you any other conversion rates.

If this is not what you are asking please advise the specific steps needed to get you what you are asking for and I will follow those steps.

The plot is thickening and progress is being made.

See Items 10, 11 and 15 for short computer headphone jack tests.

See Items 20 and 21 for Tascam headphone jack tests.

Side Note: As more items are added to the Exoneration Table the font size decreases, hopefully you can screen magnify on your end.

BT, you didn't say if you are able to hear sound through computer headphone jack while Tascam is plugged and powered on.

To eliminate any sound driver/ hardware routing conflicts between two devices (Realtek and Tascam) I would temperarely disable Realtek from device manager to see if it makes any difference with glitching.
-------

Also...My interface would sometimes misbehave when plugged in "hot". Meaning, plugged to computer, when computer is already running. So what solves for me is turning interface On first and then powering up computer.

In your Windows search bar, start typing Device Manager, icon should come up.

OK, I'm learning good things in this effort.
I disabled the Realtek sound card and am now playing a track in Studio One via the Tascam. After 10 or so minutes a glitch happened.

I would never have thought I'd get any sound at all with the Realtek disabled. The Tascam must have its own "sound card" built into it?

And were you able to see Item 15?

--Steve

Steve, is anything running in the background?

When I record I have to disable everything running in the background because as I add more tracks and/or effects I will get glitches. I disable my Ethernet card, anti-virus, anti-malware, VPN, Nvidia control panel, and cCleaner.

Have you tried disabling everything that runs in the background?

Also have you tried messing with your buffers? When I start recording I have my Audio Interface buffer set at 32 samples. As I add more tracks and/or effects I have to raise that, sometimes up to 256 samples. During mixing I increase it to 2048 samples. If I don't I can get glitches.

Mario, BT tried Airplane mode.

+1 on "increase it to 2048 samples"
+1 on Nvidea investigation. This one is a well known computer audio recording enemy.

My advice, at this point is to download Latencymon. It is not intrusive and well respected software to pinpoint issues related to Audio recording.

Looking at the CPU spike...... Go to the Processes tab in Task Manager and sort by the CPU column (largest on top). Next time a glitch happens, the culprit should be at the top of the list.

This could be a very important step. I will attempt.

For troubleshooting purposes you can also try dumbing down your interface from 24bit to 16bit.

Yes, that's the right software. I used it on multiple machines. It is a well known tool. You are not changing any computer configuration with it. It is a diagnostic tool.

Nvidea is known for being unfriendly with audio oriented PCs/interfaces. But if you say Dell tech disabled it, you can disregard, as it seems not to be the root cause.

It looks like I have issues with this brand new machine.
I can't find where to disable "CPU Throttling"

I kinda thought CPU throttling was a good thing as it prevents overheating damage so not something you want to disable. But you should not be seeing any overheating on a new Dell XPS with just playing audio. So not sure what to make of that message.

I likely am going out on a limb here, but, conclusion based on antidotal information and my own individual experience with Dell XPS's .... is there still an option to return the Dell and get a machine built for purpose?

Check your post above, #761854. CPU throttling is controlled on those same power settings as your screenshot..... The option is under Processor power management.

BT,
"I have issues with this brand new machine."
Most likely you don't. It is a setting slapped by MFGs of hardware and some software by default. Which is manually disabled.

Now the trick is to determine which specific item is causing throttling.
It could be setting in BIOS, it could be a Windows setting, it could be one of the settings in DELL software "cooling" management.

We will most likely get to the bottom of this. I had Dell long time ago, so my experience is a bit antiquated. I will look into it when I have a few minutes, meanwhile perhaps somebody who has a Dell can tell where throttling is hiding?

P.S. Dan is not completely correct on overheating. You will not be playing crazy graphics video games or mining crypto. For your purposes it should not be an issue (disabling throttling). I have disabled on all of my machines for the past decade.
Desktop and laptops. Never run into heating issues.

Yes, in the Windows power settings. Throttling is normally only used on laptops, and even then you don’t want this if your computer is being used for digital audio.

Apparently, you set all the values to 100% to disable throttling. See if that helps.

Reboot the machine and re-run your LatencyMon test.

P.S. - I would also go to the Dell website to see if your BIOS version is up-to-date.

Steve,
I suspect it might be a Dell crapware that overrides these. Thinkpads have similar "smart" software "features". I am just not familiar with Dells.

General line of thinking with latencymon:

OK, I just want to pause and say a BIG thanks to all those that have commented and thought about this problem. You guys are great, smart and helpful. I've never needed to deal with any of this in the past and it's nice to have a group of friends willing to help. We all think the same in that we let the evidence decide what path we should take. [It's too bad our politicians don't think like we do.]

Thanks also go out to PG Music for hosting such a useful forum. My way of giving back (even if it's feeble) is to feed back what I'm discovering so you and others may somehow benefit in the future.

I have a few things to do based on your great suggestions and if I don't respond to each post it's because it's hard to keep up with the volume.

More specific to this issue; I finally was able to reach a Tascam engineer. And not surprising he says "hey, if the 208i works fine with your Win 11 i5 but not with your Win 11 i9, then the problem is with your i9 even if it's brand new." He has a point especially now that my 1st LatencyMon results have come in showing that there are issues. He also said he recieves calls all the time for "snaps, crackles and pops" and that most of the time it's a sampling frequency problem. The Tascam wants 44.1 kHz but there may be a question about Bit Depth. From what I can see the version of Win 11 I have on the i9 does not support 16 Bit, I don't recall if this is true for the i5. But the Tascam manual says the 208i supports "16/24". This might be a Dell question. And semi-ironically he too pointed me to LatencyMon via his concern of DPC Latency. He sent me the link below from Sweetwater.

https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles/solving-dpc-latency-issues/

Special thanks to RustySpoon for making me aware of this program. And I'm still going to replace the USB cable, do the DeoxIT and other good housekeeping measures. But the foucus now seems to do whatever will make LatencyMon happy.

Finally, a couple years ago when I was quite young with BiaB I suggested that a PDF-document based "How To" set of files be maintained for problem solving puposes to avoid re-inventing the wheel over and over. This thread is quite lengthy with a TON of wisdom and experience embedded in it. This total experience is measured in man-centuries! What a waste if all this effort and wisdom becomes just another thread buried and lost in the cyber ether. When we have finally reached victory the subject of how to eliminate audio noise could be a great subject for such a How-To document. It may turn out to be 5 or more pages long but look how convenient it would be to simply point someone in the future to such a document . . .

OK, thanks again to all.

--Steve

Windows 11 on your computer most certainly does support 16-bit audio. An early step in troubleshooting is to make sure everything is set to 16-bit and 44.1K sampling rate. You can then experiment with other rates later.

Matt, the reason I say my setup doesn't support 16 bit is because in the Control Panel/Sound/Playback/Properties/Advanced I don't see 16 bit options; only 24 bit. My snipping tool won't allow me to snip and display the options so I list them below.

24 bit, 44100 Hz
24 bit, 48000 Hz
24 bit, 88200 Hz
24 bit, 96000 Hz
24 bit, 17640 Hz
24 bit, 192000 Hz

Am I missing something here?