Crackling sound making it unplayable

I was hitting about 60% usage tops, cut everything down to lowest setting, turned 4k off went 1080p. I can run cyberpunk in 4k ultra. Its not your processor.

interregnumrexI have noticed on my end when running my Geforce overlay that CPU usage is close to 100% in Minrathous and obviously the crackling is at its worst when in cities or really densely populated areas. I haven't seen it much at all when I'm in areas with less things going on.

But what I don't get is if this truly is a performance issue then why is it that cranking settings to low does not fix it? Also, I haven't noticed any fps or video lag in Minrathous or other cities and I maintain a respectable fps even if I boost settings to high. There's basically nothing to suggest poor performance by my pc except for the audio distortion.

Finally, I do have a Steamdeck and I tried it on there. The game runs without any audio issues whatsoever even though my Steamdeck has a weaker cpu/gpu than my PC. And cranking all settings on my PC to the same ones I run on my Steamdeck = audio issues still on PC.

So I don't get it. If the audio distortion is an issue with lower end pcs for VG than I would think that the Steamdeck would also be unplayable, but it's not. And my pc is still a fair bit stronger than the min recommended settings. For example min recommended VC = gtx 970 and I've got a 1070. 

I dunno. Submitted my dxdiag and a clip of the distortion in another thread on this issue. I hope Bioware fixes it because it's a bummer to only be able to play it on the Deck where I get low fps and ugly graphics.

I tried hdmi through my monitor, my wireless, bluetooth, speaker, usb speaker, direct connection into the MB. Its not your output device

I have bluetooth headphones and it made absolutely no difference for me.

I'm on PC, Windows 10 and my motherboard uses a Realtek Crystal Sound 3 (S1220A) for audio. At this point I've installed 3 different drivers (the motherboard Asus one, a certified Realtek one and a MS generic one) and they all give the same issues.

3D sound has been off from the start. I don't use an EA app and there is no error message.

I can pretty much guarantee that it's the particle/lighting engine doing it.  Are you using Lumberyard? I've seen the exact same problem in other games that use it. It's almost light the lighting engine is also sharing resources with the audio, even though it shouldn't.

Hello!
I have been experiencing stuttering and audio issues with the game since launch.
When playing the game, I am regularly experiencing massive fps drops and audio glitches and crackles with it. Limiting the fps with vsync to 1/2 and 1/3 seems to help a little, but the stutters are still there, and the base enjoyment is significantly lowered at 20 fps when the game should be running at 50-60. 
This has gotten to a point where the game is unenjoyable and many times I have died to enemies because of the framerate dropping and causing input latency, and cutscenes become so garbled that any emotional impact or immersion is completely lost. The game is lovely otherwise and I really wish I could enjoy it to the fullest. 
The 1.0.0 patch fixed nothing about the issue, and other solutions that I tried include: updating gpu driver, rolling back gpu driver, updating windows, trying out or disabling various video and audio settings, verifying the game files, reinstalling the game, setting the game higher priority, tried multiple audio devices, and most permutations of the graphics and display settings in-game, including the "optimized" settings provided by Geforce Experience. 
I did not have extra audio features (like windows sonic or dolby features) enabled in the first place, so I didn't need to try disabling that, disabling 3D audio ingame did not help either. 
My PC more than meets the system requirements, I was experiencing the same amount of fps drops and stutters on lower presets as the higher ones.

EA ID: Elwyn7
Platform: PC - Steam
Specs: 
Windows 10 64-bit
Intel Core i7-10700K, 4900 MHz
Gigabyte H410M S2H motherboard
16 GB RAM (DDR4)
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060  (12 GB VRAM)
Realtek Audio (issue persisted both on wired Logitech speakers, and bluetooth Razer headphones)
Installed on an SSD (Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 500GB NVMe m.2 SSD)
Screen Recording, save file, dxdiag.txt: Drive Link

I'm downloading the patch now but sounds like nothing was done to address this. 

Would really love to hear from Bioware that they're at least aware of/looking into it. Very frustrating. It's clearly not a performance issue because the game works fine on Steamdeck and SD is far weaker in terms of cpu/gpu etc than my or anyone in this thread's PC. 

I don't use the Nahimic software and my spatial sound is already disabled and my output device is my headphones. I've even tried both jacks on my pc (front and back panel) and got no difference whatsoever either time. 

I don't think it's a performance issue because the game runs with zero audio issues on my Steamdeck and my pc is substantially more powerful in terms of gpu/cpu than my Steamdeck is. Additionally, lowering all settings to the lowest possible settings makes no difference, and having the systems cranked to high also doesn't make any difference. The audio issues are just as bad on high or low. 

I'm getting solid fps and the game is playable otherwise and looks fine and there's no input lag or anything like that that I've noticed. I would think if my game's performance was cratering and that was causing audio issues that I would also get poor fps/input lag, but it's not the case. It's just the audio.

I really hope Bioware's upcoming patch addresses this issue but I don't necessarily expect it as we haven't heard a peep from them about this otherwise.

This was already suggested and it doesn't fix the issue.  None of the things to try that have been posted in this thread fix the issue.