OT: Intermittant Buzzing sound on Windows 10

Every so often, especially on YouTube, I get an unexpected one-second-long buzzing distortion of the sound as if the file had slowed down and overlapped itself. Recently this occurred in a fairly modest Dorico file, a recorder quartet. While at first I suspected network interference, when it appeared in Dorico I began to think this was something internal to my computer setup.

Although this is not a Dorico problem, I hope someone with more computer savvy than I can suggest what might be causing this (beyond FBI hacking my computer–just kidding). Could some sort of bottlenecking sound like this?

Dell Alienware Aurora R 10
Ryzen 7 3700 (8 core, 4.4 GB)
32 GB Dual Channel RAM (2666 MHz)
1 TB NVMe Boot + 1 TB HD
NVIDIA GForce 2060

Thanks to anyone who can help.

What are you using for a soundcard/DAC/Interface? If you’re just using motherboard audio, what board is it?

All I know so far is that it is an Alienware machine that hosts the Ryzen 7 CPU. The manifest from Dell gives no more info. Is there a way to ID the motherboard without opening the case (and knowing where to look)? I am using the on-board Realtek HD sound card/chip rather than piping sound through the NVIDIA card.

Sure, in the Windows search box just type “System” then click on System Configuration. “BaseBoard Manufacturer” and “BaseBoard Product” will tell you your mobo.

Have you checked to make sure the Realtek chip driver is up to date? Go to Device Manager/Sound, video and game controllers/Realtek HD Audio then right-click and select Update Driver. In Windows/Sound/Device Properties have you disabled “Allow applications to take exclusive control?” Do you typically have multiple audio programs open at once when this happens? (I typically have a lot: Dorico, VSL Synchron Piano standalone, VEPro, Transcribe, MIDI-OX, VoiceMeeter, then often Zoom, Pro Tools, Finale, ManyCam, etc too) If you do, you may get better results having Windows use some other software like FlexASIO, VoiceMeeter, etc. People typically get better results with external DACs/interfaces but that may or may not be a factor here. Just throwing that out in case you needed an excuse to buy a new DAC/headphone amp :grinning:

Do I understand this right, you also get that noise when just playing back YouTube in the browser? If that is the case, then a new ASIO driver won’t help either. Then something is wrong on the OS or hardware side.

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Thank you, both Fred and Ulf. This situation is a puzzle, no doubt.
The sad thing is that I upgraded to the Alienware earlier than usual because my former machine was having (different) problems of its own but may only have needed a BIOS update.