Sound Issues

I hope this is the right place, i am not sure what it woulds go under
I got Windows 11 at the end of July this year when I replaced most of the parts of the PC, mainly because of Windows 8.1 not being supported soon, but that’s not the point,

I bought creative stage 360 soundbar with a new soundcard this is connected by an optical cable (I was told it would be brilliant sound) a play mostly a game called Farm Together, it was all going well until after a few weeks I noticed the sound would go fuzzy or crackly a bit it to and froing with creative they eventually had to swap out the soundbar and sub-woofer because the sub-woofer stopped working, again the crackling reappeared so I thought maybe it’s the sound card – Creative gave me a list of things to try settings to change - one of these seemed to work, turning on spatial sound in the PC settings. I was happy for about a week when it started again so I changed the said setting back it stopped the crackling – this has now been a game for the last two weeks changing this setting back and forth– its very random and can go days without doing it, SO two questions could it be what I suspect it may be and the game messing things about somehow or Something else – sorry this is long or even possibly makes no sense at all – I don’t have other speakers or soundcard to try out (this was suggested by Creative) The optical cable doesn’t click into the soundcard I think it just hangs on in there for dear life….. ANY way thanks for reading



Jack

Weird intermittent issue, I would say hardware. You also stated the cable doesn't clip in, if you wiggle the cable, did that cause the issue to manifest?

His thanks for your reply - sorry its took so long to reply to it - wiggling the wire makes no differnce - the speakers themselves have been replaced so i am guessing it could be a fault with the soundcard itself - its doing it now

I would try updating the sound card drivers first. Download directly from manufacturer (Realtek or whatever), don't trust Windows Update. An incompatible driver causes noizy output (too much gain) or no sound at all.

The drivers are up to date - the PC build was done in july this year - its doing it every night now funny enough when i do that setting it now has decided to cut the sound from the game i am playing, so i have to restart should i want to hear anything

Looks like an incompatible driver. Check that again. It is like Windows Update installs an incompatible driver that doesn't work properly. Upon restart a better driver is installed but again replaced after a while. You must manually install the latest driver from manufacturer and then download and run Windows Update Show/Hide Tool to hide (block) any relevant update.