This audio issue has to go. Please see for audio files

[Vinny1001]

Hi,

I'm sure many of you have seen myself as well as some others complain about some audio issues. This can also be seen on many other forums on the ROG boards, and few other brands. Google is a good friend.

The issue:
With realtek drivers from either realtek OR the Asus site, I get audio pops/thumps anytime audio is played from idle. Windows navigation's "click" noise turns into a super short "tick" After 10 seconds idle, it's a louder "tick", and when an audio channel is kept open, stuff sounds normal. Even opening a webpage that opens an audio channel makes a nasty crunch sound.

*Windows default audio drivers work 100% normal*

I have done the following:

Stock BIOS
Updated BIOS
Don't even have my GPU in yet, but that works fine and doesn't change anything
Tried multiple drivers, each time clean uninstall/install
Reformatted countless times
Removed all interference/wireless stuff
Used previous builds PSU and 2 new ones
Swapped all components muliple times
Used different outlets/plugged all into same surge protector strip / tried different surge protector strips
Tried many different drivers/MEI code updates from intel from their own site
Playing with all audio settings / volume levels
Disabled any audio settings not being used, no micophone
Ran PC at performance, turned minimum cpu usage to 100%, disabled C states, speedstep, or any power saving features, EIST disabled.
I have not installed AI suite, I am literally running the bare minimum
Tried different sets of speakers, all speakers work everywhere else normal anyway (speakers confirmed working)
I have the hyper evo heatsink and put it on lightly so it's not pressing hard down on the CPU just to eliminate that being an issue
I have removed USB's, ethernet cable
Used different cables, checked all cables, used the minimal cables/hardware (no extra HD's or fans)
Tested PSU with PSU tester AND Multimeter, as well as the outlets
I've done basically everything you can find on the internet about this issue, I may have not listed all here.
I know my DPC latency was low, there weren't any crazy abnormal spikes

Literally, this only happens with the realtek/Asus drivers, so hardware should be fine, especially since I went through replacements.

I'm running G.Skill RAM that others in another thread are using without any audio issues. RAM has been stress tested, and is running at stock. They are in the correct, suggested slots. I am running the 6700k at STOCK. All stock BIOS 1402. BIOS updated without an issue. Windows 7 64x pro is installed correctly on my SSD. Only the SSD is plugged in and the M8HA is installed on a bench. I have a 850w corsair PSU.

I have swapped through 3 CPU's, 5 mobo's, 2 PSU's, as well as trying my previous builds one, 2 sets of ram, and an extra replacement on the M8HA. I get the same issue each time. I have used the hardware on a Gigabyte, and an MSI, both which did not have this audio "tick" sound. They did have a sizzle sound anytime an audio channel opened though. This has been going on for months. The gigabyte had that constant hissing sound through headphones when the CPU was doing calculations, so basically all the time. Moving the mouse across the screen made it hiss louder. MSI and Asus don't do that hissing. Could this all lead to a ground issue? My outlets seem fine and the grounding is working, plus no other devices have issues.

Asus admitted to this problem to me over the phone multiple times, as well as looking online at it to further investigate. Technical support suggested me after a week, to make sure the correct colored cables are plugged into the correct colored ports on the motherboard...

What could possible be causing this? I have read a lot on power management relating to it. I ask people if they're on stock or OCing, because if you OC you may be keeping the power higher, so on idle it doesn't power down much. I see a lot too on people having laptops with this issue and they can disable power management on their realtek settings. Desktops don't have this. I tried doing it through registry but those registry files didn't exist for power management.

Here are links to the audio files. Quality isn't the best but listen closely between the "ticks" and regular full window "clicks" I also mimicked the "thump" that plays I think through the bass, because my phone wouldn't pick it up, I mimicked it in a separate file because this "thump" plays right before the audio channel opens.

Tick1:https://clyp.it/5evymx2y

Tick2 (good clear ticks):https://clyp.it/q1aura1a

Thump noise (it's a settle "thump" so bear with me):https://clyp.it/2fkyj3ad

Regular windows click noise with windows default/audio channel open (full long regular click we all know navigating through folders):https://clyp.it/cctps45v

Please bear with the quality, it sounds so much worse in person for what I am talking of, but just this is to understand it further.

Please someone help me with this. I've been through so many replacements just to eliminate hardware, and now it's literally down to the drivers, unless some hardware is really bad and hiding good. All points to the drivers, and specifically realtek (all other drivers work with windows default audio driver)

I really hope enough people can help troubleshoot this. I just don't get how some are running a similar set up and have no audio issues.

[Celador]

Oxmo81 wrote:
This is my post of the problem if enyone want a little more info https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?82267-Hero-Alpha-crackling-sound-in-games
And you will find LatencyMon raport there 🙂 Hope You have a solution, I have tryed to disable one device at the time in Device Manager. It did not see eny change by doing so.

This doesn't look like a device issue. This clearly appears to be an nvidia drivers issue. I would recommend using this:

http://www.wagnardmobile.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=164&sid=62860a8e168e23b517f0ff37b9e69de1

To do a complete nvidia driver/software uninstallation then reinstalling latest drivers for your pc. You should uninstall everything nvidia related in normal boot, then boot up in safe mode (for windows 10 press and hold shift then click on a reboot button in start menu, after reboot select troubleshoot, advanced setting, startup settings, restart, after reboot press F4 when presented with an option to boot in safe mode) and use this program to uninstall nvidia drivers.

You should also post a screenshot of the drivers page in latencymon like i asked so i can look at the drivers you are running on your pc. It would also help if you made a screenshot of your autostart page (on windows 10 its ctrl+alt+del and switch to autorun page) and task scheduler (run taskschd.msc). In task scheduler you should make screenshots of both main library window (click on it) and Asus sub window.

If you are running AISuite 3 - you might want to uninstall it first and use this tool:

http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?34503-AI-Suite-III-Cleaner

And see if this solves this issue before uninstalling nvidia drivers.

Lastly you should try reinstalling directx (for example if you got any game on steam that has a directx redistributable in the game folder you could use it).

[Oxmo81]

Celador wrote:
This doesn't look like a device issue. This clearly appears to be an nvidia drivers issue. I would recommend using this:

http://www.wagnardmobile.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=164&sid=62860a8e168e23b517f0ff37b9e69de1

To do a complete nvidia driver/software uninstallation then reinstalling latest drivers for your pc. You should uninstall everything nvidia related in normal boot, then boot up in safe mode (for windows 10 press and hold shift then click on a reboot button in start menu, after reboot select troubleshoot, advanced setting, startup settings, restart, after reboot press F4 when presented with an option to boot in safe mode) and use this program to uninstall nvidia drivers.

You should also post a screenshot of the drivers page in latencymon like i asked so i can look at the drivers you are running on your pc. It would also help if you made a screenshot of your autostart page (on windows 10 its ctrl+alt+del and switch to autorun page) and task scheduler (run taskschd.msc). In task scheduler you should make screenshots of both main library window (click on it) and Asus sub window.

If you are running AISuite 3 - you might want to uninstall it first and use this tool:

http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?34503-AI-Suite-III-Cleaner

And see if this solves this issue before uninstalling nvidia drivers.

Lastly you should try reinstalling directx (for example if you got any game on steam that has a directx redistributable in the game folder you could use it).

Here is the LatencyMon Raport for drivers. And it seems to be aboute nVidia driver and Direx X as you mention.
I do not have AISuite 3.
Thank you 🙂

[Oxmo81]

Celador wrote:
This doesn't look like a device issue. This clearly appears to be an nvidia drivers issue. I would recommend using this:

http://www.wagnardmobile.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=164&sid=62860a8e168e23b517f0ff37b9e69de1

To do a complete nvidia driver/software uninstallation then reinstalling latest drivers for your pc. You should uninstall everything nvidia related in normal boot, then boot up in safe mode (for windows 10 press and hold shift then click on a reboot button in start menu, after reboot select troubleshoot, advanced setting, startup settings, restart, after reboot press F4 when presented with an option to boot in safe mode) and use this program to uninstall nvidia drivers.

You should also post a screenshot of the drivers page in latencymon like i asked so i can look at the drivers you are running on your pc. It would also help if you made a screenshot of your autostart page (on windows 10 its ctrl+alt+del and switch to autorun page) and task scheduler (run taskschd.msc). In task scheduler you should make screenshots of both main library window (click on it) and Asus sub window.

If you are running AISuite 3 - you might want to uninstall it first and use this tool:

http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?34503-AI-Suite-III-Cleaner

And see if this solves this issue before uninstalling nvidia drivers.

Lastly you should try reinstalling directx (for example if you got any game on steam that has a directx redistributable in the game folder you could use it).

I did uninstall nVidia first in normal boot, the I used the program in the link you provided. And i did update the Diret X 12, but I'm sorry to report, this did not help.

[Celador]

Oxmo81 wrote:
I did uninstall nVidia first in normal boot, the I used the program in the link you provided. And i did update the Diret X 12, but I'm sorry to report, this did not help.

Actually it seems that you have 5 drivers which are causing latency issues. Are you sure you don't have something like AISuite 3 or ROG RAMCache installed? Also - have you ever installed AISuite 3 on this pc? If so - use asus removal tool on previous page just in case.

This pretty much looks as if some software is interfering with those drivers. Which antivirus are you using?

I would suggest disabling "corsair utility engine", "logitech download assistant" and "scproxy". Uninstalling them would be the best but at least disabling them in start-up window might work as well (some programs do not allow to be completely disabled this way).

Then download and run:

http://www.surfright.nl/en/products/

http://www.adlice.com/software/roguekiller/

Free versions are fine. Hitman pro works only for a month but its enough for a one time scan. You can uninstall them when you are done.

Also - did you run that nvidia removal tool in safe mode or in normal boot? It is important because it sometimes can't delete everything during normal boot.

If this fixes your issues - you might want to try enabling those programs back one by one until you find the culprit. If this doesn't help - run in safe mode again and check if the issue exists there or run "msconfig" (win+r) and select "diagnostic boot". If the issue doesn't exist in safe mode or in diagnostic mode - it means that some software is the culprit here and the only thing left to do is uninstall your utilities and old software one by one until the issue is fixed or reinstall windows 10.

In my experience - these sort of issues with several drivers involved are always related to AISuite or similar programs which interfere with different drivers. You should also run perfmon /report and save the report as html, then upload to http://mediafire.com/ (or anywhere) if you want or post on one of these forums:

http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f338/

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/f/229/windows-10-support/

In case everything else fails.

My bet - its either one of those software's mentioned in auto-run or antivirus (bitdefender, kaspersky, norton are particualry prone to these sort of issues).

[Oxmo81]

Celador wrote:
Actually it seems that you have 5 drivers which are causing latency issues. Are you sure you don't have something like AISuite 3 or ROG RAMCache installed? Also - have you ever installed AISuite 3 on this pc? If so - use asus removal tool on previous page just in case.

Yes I did uninstal nVidia first in normal boot, then in safmode, and used the Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) in safemode.
I have done everything you aske of me in this post also.
Disabling "corsair utility engine", "logitech download assistant" and "scproxy" did not help.
Hitman and RogueKiller did not find any thing.

I have never installed AISuite 3 or ROG RAMCache or AISuite 3 on this pc. The only Asus program i have is Sonic Suite 2, but I installed Sonic Suite 2 after i did get this problem, in hope it wold fix it, but it did not. The problem starts from the beginning of a fresh Windows 10 installation.
This is the second time with a fresh Windows 10 installation, same problems in both of them. So a third fresh install, I do not think it vil help. Of course I'll wil install Windows 10 once more If you think it wold help.

The only thing I did was to inastall Z170 chipset driver then nvidia driver and started to test with some games. Because of this problem i tryed to instal a fresh Realtek driver, did not help, then Sonic Suite 2, did not help or worse.

I culd not chek if I did have the problem in safe mode, the programs I have problem with will not run at al in Safe mode.
In Debugging mode, same problems.

I migth just RMA the motherboard, I'm tired of problems.

[Vinny1001]

Celador wrote:
I am about 80% sure that all people have them but there might be various reasons why not everyone notices them.

1) Some people can't tell the difference because they used same motherboards for years.

2) Some people use software which keeps their audio channel open all the time. Fairly certain that AISuite 3 does that as well.

3) Sound issues are best heard while using headphones and not everyone does that.

4) A lot of issues seem to be related exclusively to windows 10.

5) Absolute majority of owners do not use forums and prefer to return the motherboard, use technical support or ignore issues all together.

6) ROG products are 1.5-2 times more expensive than everything else which means that there aren't many people buying them to begin with.

Combine those issues and some which i did not list - you'll get the picture.

Oxmo81 wrote:
Asus support clames it is my powersuply because it is not Intel Haswell C6/C7 compliant.
I have this PSU http://www.fractal-design.com/home/p...ewton-r3-1000w

Can this be true?

What I told about higher temperature of the CPU due to worse cooler, did made the problem worse. It was was only a system hiccup of some sort.
So it is bak to it's normal problematic self.

Yeah, I noticed that too. I think AI Suite is keeping the channel open. I'd check but last time I installed AI Suite, it gave me so many issues, as well as infinite shut down, so no thanks. Couldn't fully uninstall it either and still had infinite shut down.

I have the same issues between Windows 7 and 10, nothing is different.

I have seen plenty of others having the same audio issues, or very similar, across all the new skylake socket 1151 motherboards. I even had this issue with MSI and gigabyte, just in a different fashion.

I went through a few Gigabyte boards as well, literally. I replaced everything 3 times or so, all had same issue, never had any more issues, never had a BSOD.

I get the picture though and agree with you. I really hope something is done about it. I even have a Corsair RM850 which has all the power saving features that is needed for the platform.

Oxmo, I used my previous builds PSU from about 3 years ago, and it gave the same issue. Never had an issue with that PSU. It may give issues if your PSU isn't Haswell certified, so maybe pick one up at your local store, test it, and return it.

It would be good to eliminate that, if that were the issue.

I have normal temps so no issue becomes worse or any better. It's the same issue at good temps. I'm just glad Asus showed me that they replicated it, so hopefully they're tackling it...

I've already had two friends not want to purchase the new Z170 Asus boards because of what I have shown then about the audio and what I have done to troubleshoot. They also looked through forums to do some research themselves.

I said it's a great board other than that, and they still drove away from it and decided to wait. They currently have Asus boards as well. I really am trying to talk good about the boards, I just have told them my story and they have tried helping as well as doing their own research. They want to purchase but want to wait till things are fixed up more.

[Oxmo81]

I did find this error in Audio Properties: Device HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0900&SUBSYS_10438691&REV_1000\4&3d4356c&0&0001 requires further installation.

Does eny one of you also have this?

[Oxmo81]

Did get this reply to day after a few e-mails to Asus support:

Hi

I know that there is some confidential chipset wide issue in the z170 series that i cannot discuss in further detail, i just got the infor today via some channels but the info comes directly from intel. I don't have a release schedule for a fix but if it is indeed a chipset wide issue i think they will rollout updates quite soon. However i cannot promise that the fix will be able to adress the issues you are having.

One more thing, if you happen to have an old add in LAN card you might give that a go and disable all the built in lan adapters in the bios.

I do not have a add in LAN card, so this I can not test. But it got a little better after disable LAN and only use WI-FI.
I guess we have to wait for a fix from Intel or maybe Asus can do some thing with a new Bios. I'd did hope that the Bios 1402 did help, but unfortunately it did not fix my motherboard audio problems.

[Oxmo81]

Screenshot of autostart and task scheduler, I culd not find a Asus folder in task scheduler.

[Oxmo81]

I did putt my old Asus GTX560 Ti in to test if it may be the graphic card fault. It may be, cuz I now I can paly games, even Dying Ligth and Far Cry 4 works now. In Far Cry 4 I had to set graphic detail to medium to get almost 60 FPS. With Far cry I did not change settings and had 45-55 FPS. This is a new LatencyMon print screen Driver tab.