Premium - Crackling, Stuttering

[chrislounsbury]

After a day of futzing around with this, I'm at wits end.

I'm using a Dell Latitude laptop (work laptop).  It has a fully updated version of Windows 7 64-bit.  Since the last update (I think) I've bee hearing crackling and stuttering in any and all tracks.  It comes and goes, there could be 30 seconds of pristine playback and then a brief crackle/stutter.  

After searching the forums and Intertubes, here's the things I've tried:

1. Resetting sound device settings, and trying various stample rates and bit-depths

2. Toggling off Hardware Acceleration

3. Toggling off Play all songs at same volume

4.  High quality streaming

5.  Downloading playlists local

I went so far as to drop $100 on a USB DAC that bypasses my built in Soundcard in my laptop and docking station, and the crackling still persists.  

It does NOT happen in iTunes, Windows Media Player, or in YouTube videos.  Only Spotify.  I'm getting really frustrated, as I'm paying $10 a month for a service that is almost unusable to me for 8-10 hours a day.  

It works fine on my iPhone and my several Macs at home without issues.  Only my Windows 7 machine that's causing the problem.  

[Artydp623]

YES!

Thanks so much, was begining to think that there was an issue of some sort with my laptop. Rolling back the Realtek driver to the driver from 3/7/2018 (UK format) fixed it for me.

Thanks, can finally get some work done!!

[imnotarealrobot]

So I'm on Win 10, in a corporate environment. My PC is a beast, internet is fast as it can be, but a few times a week the Spotify Desktop app and most browsers will start having stuttering, maybe every 10 seconds, or sometimes less frequent, but enough to be noticable and ruin the listening experience.

There isn't any clear indication as to the cause, and nothing makes it go away. The only way I can listen without any stuttering is to use the Microsoft Edge browser, but that player randomly stops outputting any audio so I'm constantly fighting the buggy web player instead. I can stream from other services without any sound quality issues.

You make me sad, spotify.

[l337g0g0]

My game was skipping from sound issues, I sat on my laptop forum for a month trying to problem solve it.
I thought it was probly real tek, ddn

't know we can go generic, I thought real tech was generic.

I'll respond back if it fixed gaming.

The skippings gone when spotifys in the background.
Thank you so much.

[td8-n_mznf34h]

A heads up for everyone using a Creative Sound Blaster card and experiencing issues; Creative released new drivers a couple of days ago (yup, 2019 driver update for 10yr old cards) that has fixed all issues I was having with Spotify in Windows 10. 
With a bit of luck, these new drivers will solve the issue for others too! So check if there are updated drivers for your card 🙂 
For reference, I use a Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional card.  

If still unsuccessful, I figured out a bit more of an advanced workaround using ASIO drivers that I could write up here. 

Best of luck!