Audio Crackling/popping issues suddenly!

Hardware Hub
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Hey everyone, long time lurker first time poster! I come to you today in the hopes one of you have encountered a similar issue and got a working solution!

I bought an Elgato HD60 USB capture card a few months ago, and other then a few minor issues here and there it has been great. I've been using their game capture software for sometime and only in the past few days have I run into this weird audio crackling/popping issue. Short video https://youtu.be/ifHTDKQKzk0

My capture setup currently is an HD 7970 with an adapter to change display port to hdmi, leading to my elgato with another HDMI cord to my 1080p LG display. An aux cord to my front panel header from elgato. And the USB mini b from my elgato to mobo. I duplicate the sound using their sound capture software to play through both my speakers and the aux out! (A few weeks back I had this solution working with listening to the stereo mix in control panel/sound somehow, but randomly 1 day it just no longer worked and spent hours trying to fix and couldn't, so I settled for the elgato sound capture solution instead. It worked fine until this crackling issues started days ago.)

The crackling does not happen through my speakers at all, only in my game recordings! I haven' updated any software or done anything differently recently, but now no matter what I do it persists.

Things I Have Tried!
Switching all cables connected to Elgato , both HDMI cables, USB mini b 2.0 cables and the aux cord carrying my audio. My HD 7970 doesnt have hdmi so Im using a display port --> HDMI adapter

Disabling all unnecessary devices in control panel/sound

Disabling all enhancements from active devices in control panel/sound

Swapping my aux cord from my front panel HP jack to my Yeti HP jack

Plugging a different aux cord into my mobo directly to the Elgato HD60

Using different recording software (OBS)

Problem does not seem to happen while streaming (only recording)

Some solutions talked about webcam overlays and needing to drop the resolution. I don't have one but disabled the webcam overlay options anyways.

Some solutions said it could be CPU maxing out, but even under 60-80% load it still happens.

I'm almost exhausted out of ideas minus a clean install of windows (which is my absolute last resort.) The crackling seems random and I've tried to correlate it with key presses or mouse click , but it is not consistent. Sometimes it happens a lot, sometimes a little. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated and if we can discover a solution I'd be happy to post it all over the interwebs!

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Ok so if I read all that correctly if the bad sound doesn't come from your speakers or when streaming, which depending on your streaming software and/or recording software, is most likely being handled by the cpu itself and the audio chip onboard. The elgato however should be handling the audio processing for your capture (I'm assuming you are using a Elgato software or something - it may even be that obs and stuff use the elgato's processing chip, i don't know). So it seems to me that the issue may be the elgato. Also, and this may sound stupid, have you tried using a different usb port. And i mean a port on a different controller. Usually usb's are in pairs, so try a different hub or port. If that doesn't work try an external powered usb hub. Sometimes bad power or dirty power via the usb could cause audio pops/crackle/static.

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So after hours wasted trying to figure out what was wrong, I think I just figured it out. https://youtu.be/8hxi1juvlME What is left unexplained is a) why this wouldn't happen in stream b) I've been seeing those spikes in game capture for weeks but just wrote them off as nothing because I never heard the issue in any other of my videos until recently. c) Why it would also happen in OBS?

It's not happening just from my recordings it seems, I finally had the sense to turn on my previewing with game capture and even just sitting doing nothing the crackling happens. What the hell is that?

Regardless I will try recording tonight to see if that eliminated the issue and check back here. If successful I will accumulate all the troubleshooting I can find and make a video for anyone else who encounters this cause boy, was this an absolute pain in the ass with a stupid simple solution!

Thank you Carl_Hinkel for your input, cause I was also starting to suspect dirty power. We've had a lot of electrical issues where I'm living and electricians telling us they grounded our house (even though my power bar reports otherwise!)

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