Audio Crackling in more demanding games after lastest update

[JacketIsley]

I am noticing persistent audio Crackling sounds on more demanding games. Specifically elden ring and monster hunter world. It has only been happening after the latest steamos update and people have said reverting back to the old steamos fixes it. There has been no fix yet.

[ruifcastro]

I saw a post that a user tuned off the Steam Recording and crackling was gone. Try it.

THis could mean the problem is with the Recording.

[JacketIsley]

I saw a post that a user tuned off the Steam Recording and crackling was gone. Try it.

THis could mean the problem is with the Recording.

I don't have game recording on unfortunately and have tried everything including various proton GE. Im just gunna hope that steams next update will fix and address this.

[senft-research]

I want to go out of my way to add 2 things:

1: I am having this issue on the Legion Go S as well, with crackling / stuttering, which seems to be performance bound (i.e. more intense of a game, worse the stuttering.

2: To really make it clear to Steam, this is an problem seen in multiple issues, specifically #1943 & #1953 .

In my opinion, this is an issue that needs to be investigated as soon as possible as it is quite literally game-breaking. I feel as if I cannot play anything. The command "fix" is merely a stop-gap that mitigates, not resolves the issue.

Fundamentally, something in the latest version of SteamOS has caused a drop in audio quality (even with headphones in, it is not a hardware issue) when the system is under heavy load.

[senft-research]

UPDATE: I can confirm that this issue is fixed by restarting your Steam Deck / Legion Go S.

This bug is able to be reproduced by having your handheld enter sleep mode, and then having it wake up.

By fully powering down and turning back on again (or restart) the issue is resolved!

[CrazyCoder]

I had the same issue until I switched to the main OS channel per https://www.reddit.com/r/ROGAlly/comments/1l2awks/psa_if_you_are_installing_steamos_on_the_rog_ally/ and installed the latest update as of today.

[senft-research]

I had the same issue until I switched to the main OS channel per https://www.reddit.com/r/ROGAlly/comments/1l2awks/psa_if_you_are_installing_steamos_on_the_rog_ally/ and installed the latest update as of today.

Please be careful with this because, as mentioned in my previous post, this issue seems to be related to the handheld entering sleep mode...

An update "fixing it" can actually just be because to update you need to do a hard restart.

I would suggest letting your handheld enter sleep mode and then bringing it out of sleep mode to see if the bug still persists.

[CrazyCoder]

I would suggest letting your handheld enter sleep mode and then bringing it out of sleep mode to see if the bug still persists.

I played several games and put the device to sleep several times. So far so good. But of course I can't be 100% sure it's fixed. Will post back if the issue persists.

[bastiHST90]

I have the same issue on my Steam Deck OLED. What fixed it for me was lowering the Microphone to completely low/off. (I noticed the problem before with my headset, sound was crackling when I used the steam deck microphone, when I switched to the microphone from the headset the crackling was gone)

A restart did not fix the problem for me. I fresh rebooted my deck and immediately booted a game, game was crackling. Only the microphone setting fixed my issue.

[mwessman]

I am having this issue on my Rog Ally when docked with HDMI. Basically it starts crackling after gaming for like 10 minutes, and then the audio comes back but with a 1s delay, which makes it unbearable to play docked.
The workaround to restart the Ally while docked and not using suspend works, but it is quite annoying to not be able to use the suspend feature.

P.S. I faced similar issues with Bazzite, which is why I jumped to SteamOS, just to find the same issue. Windows didn't have this issue, but it was a terrible experience when docked otherwise lol.

[edfloreshz]

I'm having the same issue and the workaround @1basti1 provided also works for me.

[JacketIsley]

I will try the mic thing. But I have found a complete but temporary fix. Once I reverted back to the old steamos before 3.7.8 all audio problems disappeared. But it will automatically update back into 3.7.8 if you go into desktop mode or restart steam deck.

[edfloreshz]

Yeah, I honestly don't want to revert back, but the mic fix is acceptable until Valve fixes this issue.

[JacketIsley]

Yeah, I honestly don't want to revert back, but the mic fix is acceptable until Valve fixes this issue.

Unfortunately I just checked and the mic thing did nothing for monster hunter world.

Also can I ask why you don't want to revert back? I don't think it causes any problems.