Crackling noise from Windows 8 Consumer Preview with VIA HD Audio Deck

[|Gyani|]

I am running Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Everything is fine like graphics, features and functionality but I am getting consistent crackling noise while playing audio from the speakers. Whenever I try play music or watching a video. The issue is same with Pandora, YouTube, or Windows Media Player. I have VIA HD Audio Deck with latest drivers. What can I do with this crackling noise? My computer specs are: AMD A6-3650 APU, 4GB RAM and onboard audio.

[Jokull]

There won’t be a problem with your sound card or VIA HD Audio Deck. It is about the drivers, they might be buggy. When I had the same problem simply uninstalled the VIA drivers and deleted every entries regarding those drivers as well. After that I let the Windows to scan for hardware changes and then installed the windows native drivers dated 2/17 rather than VIA drivers. Now everything is fine.

[servan$]

It really didn’t work for me. When I installed the HD Audio drivers provided by Microsoft, I got two audio devices in device manager>sound. In that one was VIA HD Audio Device and the other one was High Definition Audio Device. The Crackling sound remains the same.

[Muwafaq]

As far as I know that whoever having the a VIA VT1818 or any other VIA HDA chipset, they have to make sure that these things won’t work properly with Windows 8 HDA driver. The cause is due to the broken enumerator which will not let you to find the output devices. Digitally it works fine but not with the output speakers. You have to download the Windows 7 drivers and install them manually. When you do the manual installation of Windows 7 driver, the output devices being detected but as the "robot sound". Now go to the Device manager> VIA HD Audio Deck and manually roll back to the Microsoft supplied driver. Like this way sound settings will be restored.

[Alondra]

You have to know that Windows 8 consumer preview is not the final version and it is not the stable release. It is common that you will see problem with RC [release candidates] and Beta versions. The issue is mostly due to the incompatibility with certain hardware and its drivers. Sometimes an unknown bug could cause the huge problem. So it would be better if you run the windows 8 consumer preview in virtual machine like VirtualBox. You should not dual boot it with another OS. You will see fewer problems in VM. Terrible thing is there is no support from the Microsoft for consumer previews or beta versions

[Eyvindur]

If you are getting incompatibility issue with Windows 8 CP, then there is an easy way to check the hardware and software compatibility. Windows 8 offers analyzer which will scan the hardware and software for compatibility and generate the reports. Otherwise you can manually check it in Windows compatibility center.