Audio popping & crackling while gaming

J

JonnyB

Bit poster
While doing any kind of moderate to heavy gaming, in many titles the VM audio makes random popping and crackling sounds. I have tried so many things to alleviate the problem, but for the life of me I cannot determine the source of it. Sometimes running games at a lower resolution helps, but in one case (La-Mulana) running at the desktop resolution fixed it. I've changed EVERYTHING about the VM settings and allocations, so no reason to revisit that.

I'm running 10.9 and the latest version of Parallels 8 with Windows 8.1, and I've had this issue over the course of two Macs (11" MBA and 15" rMBP) thinking an upgrade would help. The Parallels 9 trial also exhibited the same issue. It's super depressing to be so close to gaming utopia, but because this stupid annoying crackling I still have to boot into Boot Camp.

An easy way to test the crackling is to go the Advanced tab of the Speakers Properties of your audio source, and click the Test button several times. If there is clear distortion or crackling, then you have the problem too.

I'm crossing my fingers that Parallels 10 + Yosemite will solve the problem, but I'm not getting my hopes up too high. I fear my future has much crackly gaming in it. :(

Has anyone else been able to solve this problem? I can't possibly be the only one who has it?
 
Also the crackling is intermittent and relatively subtle, not loud and constant. However, it's still very obvious and makes gaming quite painful.
 
Really, nobody else has this problem? It's happened to me over the course of 2 Macs and several version of Parallels, so I assumed this happened to everybody.

Maybe nobody takes gaming in Parallels very seriously?
 
Well, I just realized that plugging in headphones makes the popping and crackling completely go away. This has to be some kind of software issue. I wish I could somehow re-route my internal speakers so parallels sees them as external, but at least I can use headphones. (also just upgraded to Parallels 9, no difference)

I do love talking to myself. Hopefully someone at Parallels is at least taking notes.
 
Hello,

I consistently get a loud single POP when the first audio kicks in after a long period of silence. This though is any and all sound from the Windows VM and not specific to any particular activity.

Never fails to make me JUMP as well!! Very annoying. I'm sure it wont be doing my Macbook Pro speakers any good either!
 
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