Sound card starting to fail? or Win 10 prob?

[Daehawk]

I cant tell if its Windows or my sound card. It started when I upgraded to Win10 though.

ill be watching a YT video or music and all is well then the next one i start the sound has receded and has a big scratchy poppy hissing in it. Kinda tin'y I can still hear the audio like a person talking ina video or the music in a music video but its lower down and has the scratchy shit over the top of it.

The only fix Ive found for this is a full system reboot. Ive tried disabling sound devices in my Device Manager and re-enabling to no effect. Only a reboot clears.

I 'think' 1 time it fixed itself after a while when I didn't feel like rebooting in the middle of a long video I didn't want to lose.

[Blackhawk]

Have you ruled out your headset and/or speakers?

If so, try plugging them directly into the motherboard (most gaming PCs don't require sound cards anymore and haven't for years.)

[hitbyambulance]

does sound like a driver problem... this reminds me of the junk i went through when the SB Live! i was using would just do random stupid stuff back in the early 2000s (including BSoDs). Creative Labs' drivers were not so good.

Have you ruled out your headset and/or speakers?

If so, try plugging them directly into the motherboard (most gaming PCs don't require sound cards anymore and haven't for years.)

since you have a soundcard installed, disable it completely and then enable the onboard sound, trying the 'headphone/speaker out' on the mobo itself

also try a USB headset (if you have one)

[Daehawk]

ill try these things. Dont have a headset now...last one was a super nice one but broke. Had it when the wife was alive.

BTW I have a Sound Blaster Z card and some Klipsch ProMedia speakers