topic Cracking, Popping sounds in Desktop (Windows)

Cracking, Popping sounds

JackWick — Sat, 13 Apr 2019 18:25:43 GMT

Plan

free

Country

Device

Operating System

Win 10

My Question or Issue

Hello, I'm experiencing playback issues since last week.

When listening to any song I get constant cracking and popping sounds. It happens when listening just on Spotify! All of my windows playback devices are affected, and it always happens, the desktop app being affected as well as the web player. On Android or on a different computer however, everything seems to work fine. I have never experienced similar issues with any other program.

Sounds similar like an old vinyl player or when the cable is broken in your hedaphones. Tried with Soundbar, headphones, bluetooth headphones and no difference. No problem under adv... YouTube, Games, Films, my own music not affected and this is not hardware issue.

Some information about my setup:

Spotify Premium
Windows 10
Motherboard Name : MSI Z170A Gaming M5 (MS-7977) built in audio

Things I already tried:

Reinstalling the newest version of Spotify (This actually made things worse. Before reinstalling, I was able to "fix" the issues by resparting the desktop app, now the noises are always present)
Clearing the cache
Turning "Set the same volume level for all songs" off/on
Logging out of all other devices that are connected to my account

Any ideas or experiences with similar issues are appreciated.

Re: Cracking, Popping sounds

zombie911killer — Thu, 05 Oct 2023 09:53:24 GMT

Recently I just got cracking / distorted sounds playing Spotify on my Mac Ventura 13.4.1c. The weird part is when i play YouTube or any other application that plays audio it works fine.

I have reinstalled it, cleared the cache, and changed audio settings (ex. download quality, ), and I have tried changing the equalizer, and nothing is working. I have tried searching for answers, but nothing is working. I have no idea how to report a bug or fix the problem. RIght now i use my phone to work around the audio bug on my mac. I have trried the webplayer too and it has the same problem on my mac it is very distorted and sounds like those dank memes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgbBLBWCOSs&ab_channel=soundeffectVNSFX ) for context. Not joking it 100% sound just like this video except louder

Re: Cracking, Popping sounds

Elena — Fri, 06 Oct 2023 09:28:35 GMT

Hey @zombie911killer,

Thanks for reaching out on the Community!

Can you check if there's any updates available for your Mac's OS?

If the issue persists, could you let us know if you're using headphones or any Bluetooth speakers while using Spotify on your computer?

Keep us posted on how it goes.

Re: Cracking, Popping sounds

zombie911killer — Fri, 06 Oct 2023 16:23:16 GMT

It's the version of Spotify versionn 10.12 works but anything after makes a
distorted sound

Re: Cracking, Popping sounds

zombie911killer — Sat, 07 Oct 2023 06:25:53 GMT

I found out that versions 10.14 & 10.13 of Spotify are causing those sound problems on my Mac, any version before that ex 10.12 works perfectly. I Have no idea how an update causes this. I just reinstalled version 10.12 of Spotify

Re: Cracking, Popping sounds

MihailY — Sat, 07 Oct 2023 06:38:22 GMT

Hey @zombie911killer,

Does this happen with all tracks? If not, can you please send us links to the affected ones?

Cheers,

Re: Cracking, Popping sounds

zombie911killer — Sat, 07 Oct 2023 10:57:16 GMT

Yes it happens to all tracks all podcast anything with audio on spotify.

Re: Cracking, Popping sounds

zombie911killer — Sat, 07 Oct 2023 10:57:56 GMT

i wish I could send a video. Am I the only one having this problem on mac? The only good part is that v10.12 works perfectly with no problem but anything after it makes distorted sounds like cracking and popping.

Re: Cracking, Popping sounds

SeahorsesForever — Sun, 14 Jan 2024 08:10:10 GMT

This is also happening on my Mac and it's driving me crazy! It sounds terrible and it's like every 5 minutes

Re: Cracking, Popping sounds

zombie911killer — Sun, 14 Jan 2024 12:02:21 GMT

Use update 10.12 some weird reason the old update doesn't glitch the sound
out in fact try all updates

Re: Cracking, Popping sounds

Sebasty — Sun, 14 Jan 2024 19:29:53 GMT

Hey!

I have honestly not encountered this issue and on Ubuntu it sounds wonderful. Enabled normalize volume makes the sound much worse though, so I can tell that.

Helpful hings that come to mind: using Spotify Connect to briefly route playback to phone and back. Or start playback on phone and then route it to the desktop Spotify.
Making sure Spotify is not having any issues through performing a clean reinstall.
Just in case check if you don't have unnecessary apps connected to your Spotify account.

You can also try creating another account and see if that is also affected by the bad audio.

Distortion and crackle at low volume, PC only

Pandahill — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 06:47:59 GMT

Plan

Premium

Country

Australia

Device

Windows 11 PC

My Question or Issue

When playing relatively soft music typically solo instrumental piano or violin, I am getting crackle and distortion that sounds like speaker overload on tracks. I have both spotify and PC volumes set to 50%, and have tried various wired headphones but the crackle buzz persists.

Potentially the Normalise/equaliser may be the culprit as if I turn these off the problem lessens.

Playing the same tracks though iphone using the same wired headphones and the sound is clear.

Example track is: https://open.spotify.com/track/3TXgtWFkb8MlIqtzBtyI5D?si=055947b0e07349b4

With normalise and very low level equaliser settings on, the piano note at the 5sec mark is heavily distorted