Crackling noise from speakers

I just realized today that when Audio starts playing, there is a crackling sound from the speakers...

I checked the Sound Blaster EQ Settings and everything is at default and the profile set to Music

any ideas? Could the speakers have gone bad so fast after only owning this laptop for 2 months?

 

hmm, just noticed it happens randomly, like certain sounds trigger the crackling, for example sometimes when I right click on a file and choose RUN AS ADMIN, you now that UAC Notification sound? that kinda triggers it.....

Dunno what to do...

 

Maybe it's interference. I know that's one of the benefits of using an external sound card. Sometimes internal cards register electrical interference from other components within the laptop and that's what you're hearing.

Or it could be a bad speaker. The speakers, and keyboards like in your other post, in Clevo machines don't have the best track record. These are definitely the two weak points of Clevo machines that I'd like to see improved. One of the speakers in my p170em blew out/started crackling just after the warranty went out. It's only audible at certain wavelengths. Maybe try playing some songs, usually ones with more bass range, and see if you notice the sound at a consistent point in one or multiple songs. This could confirm that the speaker is going bad if it always has trouble at the same sound range.

 

i think it's the speaker bro, happens in any song or even slight audio notifications from Windows. I connected my headphones now and there is no crackling so I think it's the speakers

are they easy to replace?

 

Sorry to hear that man. I feel like you've been having a lot of issues with your laptop. I've had my fair share of issues with my Clevos over the years, but they're still worth it to me due to the ability to change out or upgrade pretty much everything. Like being able to go from 7970m to 980m. My 2012 laptop is still able to compete with more recent offerings. Anyways, I haven't done a speaker swap but I looked into it at one point and it didn't look too difficult. Not as easy as changing ram, SSDs, or even video card, but still not that bad.

 

well I changed the CPU myself and delidded it. I hope it's not more difficult than that.

The issues I faced with this Eurocom laptop are all due to cheap components like the keyboard and now the speakers. But they failed in less than 2 months which just comes to show you how cheap they are quality wise. Hardware is amazing and is the best but I never had such components fail on any other laptop in all the 16 years I have been using laptops.

 

Yea man it's unfortunate. I had issues with both in my p170em. The keyboard I had almost immediately like you, but the speaker didn't go out until over a year.

I searched for how to swap the speakers in a p870dm and couldn't find anything. Hopefully one of the resellers will chime in.

 

@Ethrem @Mr. Fox

What are your thoughts...

 

Reset BIOS defaults and uninstall Creative audio software/drivers, let Windows install the generic audio driver. Creative's stuff is far from perfect and overclock can sometimes cause weirdness. If the problem is still present, try a different GeForce driver or fall back to the Windows generic VGA driver and check. If none of the above makes the problem go away, then maybe the speakers need to be replaced.

I've had this unit since October and the speakers are fine. I don't know that I would dismiss them as being cheap or no good. I think they are some of the best built-in laptop speakers I have ever listened to. Sometimes even good stuff fails.

As far as replacing them goes, "easy" is going to vary by individual. Is it difficult and extraordinarily complex? Nope. Is it an inconvenient pain in the butt? Yup, pretty much... . You'll have to repaste CPU/GPU and remove enough screws to choke a mule. But, it's not difficult for people that are used to working on laptops. Look at the video in my YouTube channel for the screen assembly replacement. You'll follow essentially the same steps to access the speakers.

 

I will take a system image using Reflect, then restore back to the point before installing any drivers and check, if that fails, I will reset BIOS to defaults, if that fails, then it's the speakers

can you please link me to that video?

 

I took the whole system apart last week down to the motherboard. From the looks of it, a lot of it needs to come off for you to take the top panel off to access the speakers.

 

I went looking for it and remembered (after I did not find it) that I gave the raw video footage to Eurocom and they published it in two parts. Check their channel or web site for the 4K screen upgrade video. There is a 4K screen installation photo tutorial here and at Tech|Inferno that should be helpful as well.

 

Hit me up if you need help and @Mr. Fox isnt available. Its pretty easy to take the whole system apart. Just gotta be careful.

 

bloody hell! just what I needed to hear

 

Just a crap ton of screws, nothing extraordinarily complex. The palm rest being tedious to remove is probably why the rest of the machine is easy to work on from the bottom side. A lot of things are attached to the palm rest because there is nothing else to attach to. It is the functional equivalent of an ordinary laptop bottom chassis. I love the design, but I can think of more fun ways to pass the time. Just roll up your sleeves and "git 'er done" and it will be over before you know it.

 

Someone please shoot me in the head..... this is NOT fun.....

 

@Mr. Fox @bloodhawk

hmm, even wearing the headphones, I am hearing this small crackling randomly when playing Audio, I hope to good it's a BIOS and/or driver issue....

will do the restoration to stock in a couple of hours and try as I am in the cafe now so I can't hear the speakers properly

 

Dude its EZ PZ. I actually took apart my friends P870DM-G , because the idiot dropped it down the stairs, took a few tumbles and the hinge or something tore through his display cable. I took it apart so see how difficult it was gonna be to change it, and since im also gonna do the 4K panel upgrade in a few days.
Its not difficult, as @Mr. Fox says, needs a crap ton of screws to come out. From the videos and guides i thought this was gonna take like 1 hour or so, took about 15-20 mins. Might take you more, if you are not too confident around thin ribbon cables and need to remember where all the screws go back, latter being the hardest part :X .
If you want i can make you a nice video in my sexy Indian voice on Tuesday or Wednesday.

btw. forgot to mention, those videos and @Akaraah 's picture guides are must if you plan on taking it apart. They are seriously helpful. Watch them a couple of times before hand and you will be gucci.

 

Sounds like something is loose, if you are hearing it thought headphones as well. Or could be pure interference. How clean is power at your place?

 

what do you mean how clean is the power at my place?

 

I have a feeling it is a driver issue.... Give it a shot and let us know!

 

AC power, for example when i was in India the power voltage at my place was stupidly all over the place. Im guessing Dubai is going to be way better, but for some reason that caused crackling in my Swan floor standing speakers. I ran the power through a UPS and it was fine after that.

Or as @TomJGX said, try uninstalling the drivers and see if that helps. Including SBX.

 

yes me too, since I heard it in the headphones too and I didn't notice this before. I hope to God it is.

 

well I can't check that but things like these in Dubai are very good, we never EVER have a power loss for one, nor any power issues that I can see. I an no pro though I don't know how to measure these things.

 

Might be the longest of shots with the power . But try uninstalling the drivers. Including SBX.

 

I also have a noise since day 1 from owning the laptop. For me it is due to the Realtek audio drivers. I uninstalled it and all is fine but this also causes Sound Blaster not to work

 

good, at least this is giving me some hope that it's a driver issue rather than a hardware one.

PS: I have tried the stock 6.0.1.7560 driver and the latest one from XMG 6.0.1.7560 with the same result.

 

BTW, can someone do me a favor please.....

enable UAC then right click on a few files like GPU-Z, CPU-Z, or whatever you want, then choose RUN AS ADMIN, when you get the UAC notification sound from Windows, observe if it's a clean sound or it has some crackling in it. Do this a few times as it doesn't happen always.

If you experience no crackling, please tell me the versions you are using for the following:

Realtek HD Audio Driver
SoundBlaster app (you can see the version in Control Panel > Programs and Features
Control Center (AKA Hotkey)

 

I agree with @TomJGX. As I mentioned before, I bet it is a driver or glitch with an OC setting problem. Don't forget to rule out the craptastic GeForce drivers. They have been known to cause audio problems now and then. I have had audio artifacts from overclocking now and then as well. Anything that is used for monitoring purposes can also cause it due to polling sensors. If you have HWiNFO64, RealTemp, AIDIA64, or anything similar running in the background, temporarily disable them and see if the problem goes away. If it does, you can usually fix the problem by disabling whatever sensor or API is causing it. Sometimes these monitoring applications can induce DPC latency if the wrong settings and sensors are active. When I find something like that I frequently find it to be an obscure sensor that I don't even care about and disabling it is often irrelevant to me.

Edit: It might even be Clevo Control Center... so, check that as well. I really do not like that utility and if I had a way to choose keyboard colors without it I would not even have it installed.

 

right, 2 things to note here:

1) can you please reply to the above post / test what I mentioned and tell me your versions of the above components?

2) Did you notice this.....with the stock Clevo Driver v354.09 and 354.35, they install something called the Miracast Audio driver, later versions don't have that..... I wonder what it is/does or if it is behind any of this....

I will restore the image to the point before installing any drivers soon and do some tests without any driver then with the drivers and see where the issue occurs.

 

Miracast is for streaming audio and video from your computer to another device or the web. It might be causing it.

I cannot tell you what versions I am running on anything right now. I've got to undo a few things I did with some aggressive overclocking experimentation last night and I am going to have to resuscitate the beast. She no worky. But, the Furyan Bashshee should be back with a vengeance in a day or two. Depends on how big a hammer I will have to use to wake 'er up.

 

Clevo isn't known for their speakers. Much like their keyboards. Heck my 3.5mm jack is broken... Push in the headset all the way and I get the left ear only, push it in part way and I get the right ear only. I purchased an 80 dollar pair of Sony Gold Wireless headphones for my PS4 and have actually found them to be phenomenal on the PC as well. Problem solved.

For what it's worth, my speakers have some nice noise as well... Not really crackling but they hiss...

Miracast audio doesn't touch system audio drivers. At least it shouldn't but it is nVidia after all so who knows.

 

can you test this please, if you have UAC off, please turn it on, then right click on a few files to run them as admin to trigger the UAC notification sound, do this 5 times and see if you can notice this hissing/crackling sound.

 

Unfortunately I don't have to do that, I'm very familiar with that sound. The speakers aren't always powered and when they power up to play sound, they hiss. That's why I got the wireless headphones.

 

that reminds me, let me turn off the power saving BS in the Realtek HD Audio Drivers and test.....

@Mr. Fox

 

Great idea. That worthless Realtek power saver trash causes audio problems on the 18 and M18xR1 as well.

The people responsible for the igmotated idea of storing settings in NVRAM instead of letting them remain volatile need to have their skull(s) split open to let the poop they have for brains run out. There are no words to express how much I hate NVRAM storage of firmware setting on computers... extremely stupid.

 

Reinstalled Realtek Audio + disable power saving = fixed it for me
Looks like the power saving feature may be the culprit here.

 

Don't know why I never really thought of that but I don't have a Realtek control panel with the P377SM-A and using non-Clevo drivers breaks the sound entirely

 

That's strange. The generic Windows audio drivers should work even when nothing else does.

 

It's the stupid X-Fi that gives me hell but without it, there's 0 bass. I prefer my headphones anyway. The audio quality of those headphones actually rival much higher more expensive headsets. You don't miss anything with them unlike every other gaming headset on the market. I just wish they weren't plastic as I drank too much one night and was wearing them and woke up with the right cup hanging by the wire. Amazingly they still work but I bought new ones anyway.

 

@bloodhawk @Mr. Fox @Ethrem @johnksss @Prema

So before even restoring the image to the point before installing drivers. I decided to try an NVRAM reset, the easiest way to do this rather than opening the laptop and removing the battery is to reload the BIOS so what I did, is I installed the latest EVOC/PREMA BIOS v1.5 (based of 1.05.03) which triggered an NVRAM reset as well.

Then I loaded setup defaults again and left everything at stock except for disabling hibernation from the ACPI settings, FlexiCharger settings, I set them as usual to start charge @ 80% and stop charge @90% and enabled Intel Speed Shift Technology and that's it, didn't touch anything else

I then booted into Windows and tried right clicking on HWiNFO 3 times and selecting run as admin to trigger the UAC notification sound which usually had that crackling in the audio......passed....

Next I loaded a YouTube Video which I know for a fact that gave me crackling......passed......

Next I played a few files which are ringtones for my mobile device which have different pitches/sounds.....passed....

so now we ruled out that it is not a hardware issue which is great as Ted from HIDevolution emailed me @ 1 AM US time this morning telling me to try a few things like going back to stock drivers otherwise they were ready to prepare a shipping label for me to send the laptop in for warranty repair which I was hoping I wouldn't have to do as that would leave me with no laptop for a long while.....

Now with that out of the way......

What do you think was wrong with my OC settings that caused this to happen? could it be the decreased CPU voltage or the high power limits?

These are the settings I was using.....

CPU:

Voltage : Adaptive
Voltage offset = -80mV
Turbo Extra Voltage = 0 (stock)
CPU Multipliers 44x4
Turbo Power Max and Short Power Max = 130000
Power Limit 1,2,3, 4 = 250000
Power Limit Time windows = 1

Ring:

Max OC Ratio: 44
Min OC Ratio: 44
Voltage: Adaptive
Voltage offset = -80mV

PSYS MAX Current and VR Limits for Ring, Core, Uncore = 640

 

After a lot of testing, I nailed it down to the cache ratio.

If I increase the Ring to 44 Max/Min, the crackling happens, with or without any alteration to the voltage offset.

I set the CPU multipliers to 44x4 with a -80mV offset for both CPU and Ring while leaving the Ring Max/Min @ 0 and the crackling didn't happen.

Not touching cache ratio ever again!

Thank you everyone for being with me on this

@Mr. Fox @Prema @Ethrem @Papusan

PS: I expected my wPRIME score to become worse since the Cache Ratio is down from 4.4 GHz to stock 4.1 GHz but on the contrary, I gained one second.....

Previous score was around 4.75 seconds...now it's lower at 4.625...... the mysteries of overclocking......

 

Not sure if this will help you or not, but did you try using the Loudess equalizer?

Control Panel -> Sounds -> Right-Click on your Active Speakers -> Properties -> Enhancements Tab -> Unclick Disable all Sound Effect if it's checked off -> Put a Checkmark on the Loudness Equalization option. Then Apply and close out.

Try playing the audio that made the crackling sounds now and see if it still happens.

Just something to rule out uneven volume levels across your laptop.

EDIT - nevermind. Looks like you figured it out!

 

Its not linked to crackle sounds but i wanted to tell that i have a p377sma and also a p375sma body: both has same hardware speakers. But my friend who has also a p375sma got another kind of speaker: bigger, much bigger than mine and better. Both of us get it from eurocom. but this last body i baught to replace mine p377sma body, i dont know where it is from, baught it in UK. I would love to have received same as my friend...so my next mod is including 4 speakers inside to output more or to find better one.

 

Told ya cache doesn't matter much, but noooooooo ... Now you can even push your core clock further keeping the cache @4 - 4.2Ghz @ -150mV (or whatever works for your chip)

But really glad it was nothing major and got sorted out easily.

 

You gained one second.... This must be with 1024M

 

@Phoenix Some images for you if you ever need to change the speakers :

 

btw, do you guys think there is some relation to high cache clocks and the speaker wires going over the transistors?

 

Added rep for previous post .
Can not imagine this be a problem. The cables are sleeved. But maybe try to route the cables different when you putting together your machine.

 

Even at stock cache settings / reset BIOS to defaults via NVRAM reset, the crackling is back.....

Listen to this.....especially after it reaches 10 seconds it is very obvious.....

Download Audio Crackling Sample

If I play a song, it doesn't happen, it's like it only happens when the sound is initialized.....

Also, playing an YouTube Video makes it more obvious, I can here popping/crackling in speeches like in this



Crackling starts after about 10 secs