DirectX kernel drivers causing audio crackling (ISR/DPC lag)

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R.Sanchez

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My hardware:

i7 8700K (no overclock other than whatever boosting the MoBo might do)
Asus Z370 Prime A
16 GB 2666 Mhz DDR4
2070 Super
BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 750 W
Windows 10 Pro N (64 bit ofc) runs off of an NVMe SSD, I have a few more SATA SSDs but no HDDs on this PC
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I have now spent roughly 10 hours trying to figure this out. Instead of describing all I did in a wall of text, I'll just explain the issue and try whatever suggestions I receive.

The issue started around last Friday but I'm not 100% sure exactly when, because it's not always there, there are periods when I don't get audio issues.

I have very severe audio crackling/popping. It is not an issue with the audio hardware, or any hardware (I have tried my audio gear on a different PC with no issues, and I booted off of an Ubuntu flash drive in the affected PC and the audio was fine, therefore the hardware is not the issue).

I found out via LatencyMon that I have tremendously high ISR and DPC latencies with DirectX and Nvidia kernel drivers (LatencyMon report at the bottom), and it seems that's the source of the issue.

The main things I have tried are:

- updating the motherboard bios to the latest version
- turning off CPU C-states in the bios settings
- turning off the "High precision event timer" device in Windows device manager (couldn't find any setting for HPET in bios)
- setting the power management in windows to "High performance"
- setting the power management in Nvidia control panel to "maximum performance"
- doing a fresh Windows 10 installation (already on version 2004)
- setting the RAM speed to base values (turning off XMP) (since this didn't work I went back to using XMP)
- turning off Windows "Game Mode"
- turning off Windows "Game DVR"
- removing NVIDIA drivers with DDU and installing an older version of the drivers (456.71, from December 2020) (since this didn't work I went back to the latest drivers)


Intel Driver and Support Assistant reports there are no missing or outdated drivers on my system.


Nothing fixed the issue. I suspect this might have something to do with the DirectX kernel since that's the one thing I have not been able to individually roll back or change?

I am losing my mind. Please help.


Here's the LatencyMon data:

Screenshot


Text Report

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