wxman123

Thanks for your response. I'm not looking for a fight. Too clear the record though, let's just be honest, whether you said "probably" bad hardware or not, a plain read of your comments (not just one) suggested that was your position such that we would probably need to live with the issue unless we changed our configuration. As to the latency not causing the audio problem, I think you're parsing words here too. It would serve little purpose to re-read the threads just to make the point...I thought you said that basically everyone can use a latency detection tool and find spikes, yet these same people have no audio issues. My take was that your position was that even if MB did cause latency that did not mean that this was the cause of the audio problem. If I misread any of this, I stand corrected. Just hoping we get a fix, and if you're looking for a beta tester I'd be glad to help.

Using Soundblaster X-fi Pro here as well. I don't think the sound card is the issue one way or the other. I haven't tested but suspect the latency would cause the same type of issues with the on-board soundcard.

Welcome to the club. The problem is real. Just search latency on this forum and you'll see my posts and many others, The forum guru's say we have bad hardware (nonsense, I'm running a brand new high end Dell) or that latency should not cause audio issues (it definitely can). The support people have been kinder and say they're working on a fix. I'm something of an audiophile and started noticing pops and clicks occasionally. After much troubleshooting I narrowed the problem to the malicious website tools, turn them off and your latency problem and audio issues will disappear... as to how much risk we're being exposed to from malicious websites, who knows. Let's hope MB can solve this issue quickly.

I hope my $2000K Dell is not "poor cheap hardware." In fact, I had no problem at all on my cheap piece of that the Dell replaced. It's a configuration issue, but the advice to buy a new nic is not sound advice IF, IF a fix can be developed.

I have this exact same issue on a brand new top of the line Dell XPS running 8.1. Every audio stream would have an occasional "skip" that I'd imagine could go unnoticed by some (or, more likely, most users would have no idea what caused it). I spent hours troubleshooting and narrowed it down to Malwarebytes. The problem is definitely the malicious website blocking feature. It causes latency spikes that correlate perfectly with the audio trouble. The problem is real and should be fixed if humanly possible. Thanks.