XPS 13 9310 Crackling audio

Crackling (and popping) are an often reported problem on computer forums and all brands of PC's, not just Dell.

There is no "one fix" for the problem.  Wi-Fi is one known cause that affects many but not all.  I just worked a crackling problem for an XPS user and that one turned out to be using it on battery (and CPU is throttled). In that case, using it with the AC power (charger) eliminated the crackling.

I did field testing of two XPS laptops for Dell last year.  Both had Latency problems (cause of crackling).  On one, disabling wi-fi cured it.  The other one  had Latency listed problems and I tried various "fixes" but non worked on that one. 

Dell Support Assist has also been known to cause popping and crackling.  I have Support Assist uninstalled on my Inspiron laptop and just manually check for driver updates. 

Download and run the Resplendence Latency Mon. Latency Mon is what we use to "clean" recording studio PC's. Run it with wi-fi enabled and then wi-fi disabled and see if the results change. 

Resplendence Software - LatencyMon: suitability checker for real-time audio and other tasks

I have the same crackling/popping issue with audio from the XPS 13 9300 laptop through a WD19TBS dock. Happens with any output, including the usb > hdmi > receiver that I want to use. Absolutely no posted solutions have worked, including disabling the Realtek startup (also tried disabling Waves), updating many drivers, disabling enhancements, etc... The only thing I found that worked was to unplug power from the dock to restart it, which works for a while but the issue comes back. This morning I'm trying plugging the usb > hdmi cable into the other usb C on the laptop, bypassing the dock. So far so good, but the issue has returned so many times that I won't be sure for a while. Not an ideal solution as I'd no longer have the single thunderbolt plug connection to the laptop.

I've been struggling with this issue for over 8 months. I bought Dell XPS 9510 in December 2021, and now in August 2022, still cracks. I spent about 150 hours of "support" with dell in mails and in WhatsApp. Each time with a new "supporter", I explained numerous times what the issue with crackling and latency  was, and all they managed to do was recommend OS reinstall (which I did 6 times), motherboard exchange (which I also did twice), no help, driver reinstall which I also did no change. Then they told me "it's a software issue, and we don't deal with those". Hours spent on nothing, and on "solutions" that don't do anything but waste time. Dell support is really one of the worsts. I event sent them movies and videos with sound crackling, but they didn't care about that. All I heard was "reinstall your OS", "reinstall your drivers", "Set your processor to 99% power usage", none of it ever worked.

However there is one thing that should help you. Apart from ACPI.SYS DPC latency, Dell also is really really, terribly so much with IRQ interupts. What might help you is set certain applications on different Cores, than others.

To me, I chose that Cores 1-11 would be my "normal cores", and Cores 12-16 would be my "work cores". You can read more about IRQ here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/kernel/interrupt-affinity-and-priority 

This fix will take you a long time, and it's manual, but it's worth it. Download "Microsoft Interupt Affinity Tool" from here: https://www.techpowerup.com/download/microsoft-interrupt-affinity-tool/

You will see a list of all drivers and services, by default their affinity is set to "any available core". What you must do is this:

- Find anything related to sound: "Sound output", "Intel Smart Sound for Bluetooth", "Realtek Service", "Intel High Definition", "RtkUniversal Service" anything that looks like related to sound, click "Set mask" and set it to cores 1-12.
- Find anything related to ACPI.sys, power or lid action: "System of ACPI.sys", "ACPI controller", "ACPI lid close action", "Power management", click "Set mask" and set it to cores 13, 14, 15, 16.
- If something doesn't look related to sound nor power, don't change its mask.

There is a lot of them, and sometimes they're duplicated. On my Dell XPS I found something like 30 "things" related to sounds, and around 18 "things" related to power and ACPI. 

Of course you don't have to go 12 cores sound vs. 4 cores ACPI, you can choose any ratio you want. But don't do 1:15. Do 4:11, 5:10 or maybe 3:12. The most important thing is that these two "types" of processes work on different cores.

The program will prompt you for a reboot each time you set a mask, but that's unnecessary, click "No". Set masks for everything that looks related to sound, and related to ACPI or power management. After you check all that look interesting, then reboot. After you start, Crackling sounds should go away.

Seems I can't disable this. I can only END TASK. I'm going to try this and see if this helps me . I am plagued by this crackling audio on a system that should be way beyond having this issue at all.