"Common" audio pop/snap issue, tried everything - almost?

eddy currents · January 14, 2021

PROBLEM SOLVED in spite of my ignorance! Anyone else with the same trouble, see my reply to this post.

The Old Box: a homebuilt Frankenstein MSI/AMD m.b. running Windows 7. It played nice with my SB1240 USB audio card. Always happy with the sound quality and the 96kHz sampling, the reason I bought it for ripping vinyl.

The New Box: a cheapo HP, ( TP01-0066 ) also with a bazillion-core AMD, along with Windows 10 that required a lot of bloatware removal.

The new box seems to hate the USB sound card. Intermittent pop & snap on MP3 & FLAC playback alike.

No such problem when an ancient Toneport UX2 is substituted. But I love the detailed, crisp output quality of the SB card, dang it. Here are all the suggested fixes I've tried thus far, to no avail. Sorry it's such a long-winded list:

Disable onboard sound in BIOS? No, wait, YOU CAN'T with this new box! It's not even in the BIOS setup menu. How asinine is that?

Flashed the BIOS with latest HP update. Still no ability to disable onboard audio. Contempt for HP engineering now at 100%.

Disabled all the Realtek audio driver crap in Device Mgr., leaving only the SB USB driver enabled. Also even tried uninstalling same while temporarily disabling Windows auto-update.

Disabled the Realtek wireless network crap with the goofy internal antenna wire dangling over the motherboard, on the suggestion that a cheap sheet-metal box with a cacophony of RF bouncing around inside can't be good. Substituted my old USB wi-fi stick, dangling a safe distance away.

Turned all the irrelevant volume pots to zero - mic, SPDIF I/O, etc.

Disabled disk "sleep" settings and physically disconnected the external mechanical drive, leaving only SSDs running.

Swapped USB slots with other appliances until blue in face.

Tried alternate player software(s).

Only thing I haven't done is remove the extra 16 GB RAM stick (specs & manufacturer OEM-identical) that I added at the outset, using all proper ESD protection. If this were defective, wouldn't it have exhibited the same problem with both soundcards? Also seem to recall that the problem existed even before adding memory.

Fresh out of ideas. Anybody around here know of anything else? Something to do with the plumbing in this old house, maybe?

THX in advance, everyone.

Edited January 15, 2021 by eddy currents
I made a stoopid assumption, and need to eat serious crow.

eddy currents · January 15, 2021

The fix: Swallow my contempt for rear-panel 1/8" line-level jacks, go ahead and use the onboard audio, discontinue the USB junk, and humbly apologize to Messrs. Hewlett & Packard for badmouthing their product design.

Someone at the Best Buy Geek Squad informed me that these new motherboards have no "onboard audio" chipset, hence the absence of BIOS setup access. It's all done in one of the CPU cores, which in my case is a beastly AMD Ryzen 7, and it turns out that the audio capabilities are equal to or even better than any of my slightly dated USB devices. Sweet & clean output, acceptable "noise floor," and zero low-level 60Hz hum like I've always expected of devices that have no shielding between the panel jacks and the electronics.

And its input sample rate goes all the way up to 192 kHz. Holy cowabunga.

Again, to HP I proffer the most humble and groveling retraction possible, and henceforth promise not to be so hasty in judgement.

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