Recently, I've been experiencing a very peculiar problem with my audio on Windows 10. When using my headphones (Soundcore Life Q10), certain songs have this weird crackling sound. I've tried several troubleshooting steps, and I don't think it's my headphones, since it only occurs on some songs, but not others. Sometimes, a song that had crackling the day before won't have it the next day.
I'm very confused about what's happening. Does anyone know what this is, and how I can fix it?
For a bit more context:
- I'm on a managed device. Run, most sound settings, and a lot of other very useful settings are unavailable. To what extent, I'm not sure.
- I'm using a Bluetooth audio device (Soundcore Life Q10). I have not tried to see if the issue persists with the aux cable yet I do have the headphones' bass-boosting features enabled (the "Bass UP" thing)
- I have the following services enabled for my headphones: "Audio Sink", "Remote Control", "Remotely Controllable Device", "SerialPort"
- I have no sound enhancements enabled (even Spatial Sound is disabled)
- Exclusive Mode is fully disabled
Thus far, I've tried the following:
- Re-paired my headphones. No effect.
- Used different speakers (wired). Crackling was gone
- Disabled Exclusive Mode. No effect.
- Reset my headphones. Worked for a few hours, then the crackling came back. Resets after this had no effect
- Tried a different media source (Groove instead of Spotify). No effect (same problem - some audio had the crackling, some didn't)