Elgato HD60 X Audio Crackling

[PanicPanicsPanic]

I just bought an Elgato HD60 X capture card to stream from both my PS5 and Nintendo Switch. I've only set it up with my Switch so far but whenever I open OBS or Elgato's 4K capture utility software I hear frequent audio crackling and popping. I am using Elgato Wave Link as my audio mixer and I did put the HD60 X in as a input to it. Whenever I have my Switch on and I'm listening to the game audio through Wave Link but OBS isn't open the audio sounds perfectly fine in my headphones. It's only as soon as the video from the Switch is being captured does the crackling start. I don't even have to be streaming or recording to hear the crackling, it is present even when the preview is up in OBS. There's a few other posts out there talking about this same issue and I've tried almost every solution but nothing worked.

Things I've tried so far:
- Updating Elgato HD60 X Firmware to newest version
- Changing USB ports with both 3.0 and 3.2 Gen 2 ports
- Changed Audio Output Mode in OBS to Output desktop DirectSound and Waveout
- Made sure both OBS and the HD60 X sample rate are set to 48 kHz
- Reinstalled Nvidia Graphics card drivers without the HD Audio
- Set Audiodg.exe's priority to High and affinity to a single option (CPU 2)
- Changed output resolution from 1080p to 720p (Still had the same crackling)

Should also mention that I am on Windows 11 and I am using headphones plugged into a Schitt Magni+/ Schitt Modi+ stack and plugged into my PC through USB. I appreciate any help as I've been driving myself crazy trying to fix for the past few days. Thanks in advance! :D

 

[RonnieRukusTV]

I'm having similar issues. I've tried a number of things but can't seem to eliminate the popping/crackling. It's definitely something on Elgato's end. I have a similar setup. I'm playing on an Xbox Series X and streaming from a PC via Elgato's HD60X capture card, Wave 3 mic, and Wave Link software. When I have my headphones plugged into my mic listing to the system audio, I have lots of popping and crackling. If plug my headphones directly into my PC and watch the same video on YouTube I have no popping. I've been dealing with this for months now and have sort of just accepted it at this point, as sad as that is.

 

[RonnieRukusTV]

I just bought an Elgato HD60 X capture card to stream from both my PS5 and Nintendo Switch. I've only set it up with my Switch so far but whenever I open OBS or Elgato's 4K capture utility software I hear frequent audio crackling and popping. I am using Elgato Wave Link as my audio mixer and I did put the HD60 X in as a input to it. Whenever I have my Switch on and I'm listening to the game audio through Wave Link but OBS isn't open the audio sounds perfectly fine in my headphones. It's only as soon as the video from the Switch is being captured does the crackling start. I don't even have to be streaming or recording to hear the crackling, it is present even when the preview is up in OBS. There's a few other posts out there talking about this same issue and I've tried almost every solution but nothing worked.

Things I've tried so far:
- Updating Elgato HD60 X Firmware to newest version
- Changing USB ports with both 3.0 and 3.2 Gen 2 ports
- Changed Audio Output Mode in OBS to Output desktop DirectSound and Waveout
- Made sure both OBS and the HD60 X sample rate are set to 48 kHz
- Reinstalled Nvidia Graphics card drivers without the HD Audio
- Set Audiodg.exe's priority to High and affinity to a single option (CPU 2)
- Changed output resolution from 1080p to 720p (Still had the same crackling)

Should also mention that I am on Windows 11 and I am using headphones plugged into a Schitt Magni+/ Schitt Modi+ stack and plugged into my PC through USB. I appreciate any help as I've been driving myself crazy trying to fix for the past few days. Thanks in advance! :D

OMG BRO! Literally after I posted my first reply, I found a Reddit thread where a bunch of people said that the NVidia noise removal VST was causing the issue. I deleted it and my popping/crackling went away immediately! I replaced it with the Elgato version and have no issues whatsoever.

 

[The1nteger]

Removing the nvidia audio and video SDKs fix the crackling issue for me too so worth trying in case anyone is also else having this issue! Thanks for the suggestions / feedback guys!