Strange Audio Issue

Dragonoid1976 · February 28, 2022

Hello, so I recently got a pre-made PC from Cyberpower, and ever since I got it I have been having a very strange audio issue. Whenever I'm playing a game (specifically a game, I have not had this issue on anything else, even videos of the same games that frequently produce this issue) at random times the audio will mute and be replaced by a loud crackling/popping noise for a few seconds. I did also manage to get a game-capture at the same time this issue occurred, and the crackling did not appear in the recording, so I'm fairly confident it is not the game itself causing this problem. I have also tested with my only other available headset, and the crackling was immediate and significantly worse, although that may have more to do with the quality of said headset than the issue itself. At this point I have no clue what is causing this problem, and I would rather not have to return the entire PC if I don't even know what the problem is. Here are my specs, apologies if I miss/misname something important, I am not the most technologically minded person (hence why I had someone more competent than me build this thing):

Motherboard: Asus Prime Z690-P Wifi D4

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070

CPU: 12th Gen Intel Core i7-12700K

Headset: Razer Blackshark V2 Pro (which worked on my previous PC with no issues)

An0maly_76 · February 28, 2022

I had an extremely annoying background noise when playing certain games, mostly in BeamNG.drive. A sort of moderately high-pitched whining / buzzing noise that sometimes came and went. I thought it was coil whine, but I finally figured out that (at least in BeamNG, as long as the camera view included the ground, it was there. If I free-camera viewed to the sky, it went away. Turned out my 43" Toshiba I was using for a monitor had some sort of ground loop issue. A cheap ground-loop filter fixed it. Your results may vary.

HeroRareheart · February 28, 2022

How are you connecting this headset, id it just being plugged into a USB header on your PC or are you plugging it into a 3.5mm jack?

Dragonoid1976 · February 28, 2022

For the most part I've been plugging it into various USB ports to run it wirelessly, I am currently trying to test if the issue persists while it it is in wired mode and plugged into a 3.5mm, but due to the randomness of the issue I cannot yet confirm what effect (if any) this has on the issue.