How to Deal With Static in Your Headphones
Static or crackling in your headphones while gaming is quite distracting and after a while it becomes a constant torment for anyone. Besides outright failure in terms of hardware (headphones, motherboard, AMP/DAC, etc) which requires fixing, there are a couple of things that could introduce buzzing for your audio output that you could try to remedy.
A Step-By-Step
Software:
- Always start your troubleshooting by restarting your PC!
- Check your Windows sound settings, disable exclusive mode, and change the sample rate.
- Disable any form of EQ that you might have applied – EQs can be applied by sound drivers, headphone drivers/software, etc. A bad EQ can introduce crackling.
- Disable spatial sound – bad implementations can introduce crackling.
- Try to isolate the issue if possible – is it crackling only when certain software is open or is it system-wide?
- Close all apps that have any impact on your audio and open them one by one. One of the apps might need a reinstall.
- Reinstall your audio driver – for your motherboard, AMP/DAC, etc.
- If you do have a sound card try disabling the included motherboard one from the BIOS. Also, try the opposite where you disable the sound card and use the integrated audio output from your motherboard.
- Disable any overclock (especially on the CPU) as a bad OC can introduce static and crackling for your audio outputs.
- Try using software with access to the Windows audio session API (WASAPI). This is useful because this way you know that your audio is bit-perfect meaning that the wrong buffer size or sample rates do not impact the output. If you still hear crackling while using WASAPI you might be dealing with hardware issues (headphone drivers, headphone cables, failing audio jack, etc).
Hardware:
- Try your headphones on a different PC, and try different headphones on your setup to see if the issue can be reproduced. Try different jacks, cables (if you have removable cables), AMP/DAC, etc. In short, rotate the hardware around to try to isolate the failing point (if it exists) just like with the software.
- Clean the headphone jacks making sure there is full contact when you plug in your headphones
- Check your cables for cuts, dents, protective shielding missing, etc.
- Use a different power source for your PC. Use a UPS if possible. Feeding your PC clean energy will reduce the chances of any type of interference.
- If you are using wireless headphones, get rid of any other devices with wireless signals in the room or try using a different less popular wireless band (switch from 2.4GHz to 5GHz since fewer devices operate on 5GHz).
- Unplug all other devices from your PC and plug them in one by one to see if the crackling comes back when a specific device is plugged or a specific USB is used. This might either show you a dying USB port or a dying wired device that causes your USB hub to malfunction.
- Try using a different USB hub (use this to see your devices) if your motherboard has more than one. Separating your audio device from all your other USB devices might remove the crackling.
If none of these tips help it might just be that your headphone drivers are dying, or perhaps your cable is failing, or even your motherboard is failing and the crackling is a symptom of that. The best way to know for sure what is happening to your headphones is to try to isolate software issues and hardware issues and test them one by one.
It could be that your PC needed a restart, or a combination of software you were using was causing issues. If the crackling persists you might just need new headphones, which would be a bummer. If there are other useful troubleshooting steps comment down below!