USB headset suddenly started crackling

Erin the Angry · December 19, 2021

I've been using a PDP Xbox one controller with a 4 post 3.5mm sony headset plugged into it on my windows 10 PC for audio and microphone for years now since my onboard sound chip is pooched and it's worked fine until today when it just randomly decides to go crackling and staticy. It's intermittent. It'll come and go randomly every few minutes. I tried cleaning all my USB ports, tried using different USB ports, tried different cables, different USB headsets, and even a different controller to pass it through. The headset works fine on my phone too. I think I have ruled out just about every possible hardware related variable I can think of.

Unplugging it and plugging it back in clears it up instantly for a few minutes and it comes back.
Now here's the weird part that has me completely stumped:
Just opening the sound settings by right clicking the speaker and going through the context menu there will instantly clear it.

Weirder still, is even when that window is open, when the distortion comes back, CLOSING it will instantly fix it... for a few minutes...

and YET weirder... is that if I leave the window OPEN and wait for the distortion to return, if I click around the menu items it'll fix it again.

Like, right above SOUND in the left panel is DISPLAY. So I click over to that and it'll fix it. Reliably. Every time.

It's got me absolutely baffled and incredibly annoyed.

I wiped and reinstalled all my USB and audio drivers too. Nothing I can think of is stopping this annoyance form happening.

I can't think of anything else to try. Did windows maybe install some stealth update I am unaware of?
I didn't install any new software and nothing I do use has updated as it's all up to date already.

Just sitting here today and it decides to go nuts unless I perform any of the steps above that grant me a very temporary fix or just sit and deal with it until it goes away on it's own for a few minutes.

Anyone else on here have anything like this happen or have more things for me to look into with this? I've seen a number of USB headset issues reported on this forum already but none have helped me figure out what's going on here in my situation.