Crackling/poor audio if app isn't in foreground in windows 11

Melthodic · 2025-05-21T15:19:16+00:00

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SO I have a weird issue that just started happening within the last couple months. I'm running kontakt standalone without a daw on windows 11 to help when I'm doing school online. As long as kontakt is on the screen, the audio is fine.

The moment it is minimized, or ends up behind another window, the audio starts crackling/distorting. I can fix this by clicking on it in the task bar so that it is on the screen again, and the audio clears up after about 10 seconds. This means that if I'm looking at my school in chrome, and it's behind chrome, I can't play the piano VST (the grandeur) that I have loaded unless I click on it first and wait 10 seconds.

Does anyone have a fix for this? It's really annoying to have to constantly flip back and forth between chrome and kontakt while I'm studying. No other app has this problem. I suspect that windows 11 might be doing something like lowering the priority while it's in the background, but I can't find anything online to either prevent it from doing that, but also other apps don't seem to have this problem.

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PoorFellow

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/45340/crackling-poor-audio-if-app-isnt-in-foreground-in-windows-11

The moment it is minimized, or ends up behind another window, the audio starts crackling/distorting. I can fix this by clicking on it in the task bar so that it is on the screen again, and the audio clears up after about 10 seconds.

This ties perfectly in with some observations that I and other have done with network drives. If you have network drives attached then it can give a similar problem and another user reported a problem where turning off internet connection helped. (if you use network drives then try remove those or else try turning off all network to see if that makes any difference)

As wrote back then I am not sure if Kontakt is the problem itself or if it is the victim of OS or system driver way of working. Alas then in the past when I as a Moderator here have tried to discuss anything technical with members of N.I. tech staff then I have only experienced lack of interest and have been told to contact support , which I guess is how it has to work because that tech staff can not waste their time on diving into every issue to check it out - for which support is their buffer. But that also means that I can not do anything other than refer to Customer Care and support. Last time Jeremy_NI promised to forward the problem report so I will try to get that done again.

@Jeremy_NI , I think that the above could possibly tie in with the problem previously reported with Kontakt and people using network drives for non-kontakt/NI purposes. Reference : Here and forward.

Sunborn

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/45340/crackling-poor-audio-if-app-isnt-in-foreground-in-windows-11

Please tell us what audio device you are using and what type of driver, ASIO or WASAPI?

I assume you are using WASAPI (Shared)? If so, then switch to ASIO or, if you don't have one, to WASAPI (Exclusive).

If you are using WASAPI (Shared) then this is exactly what it does. It shares the audio between all available apps (including your Chrome). This is causing a latency, which is short, if you are using a decent audio card, but it could be long and cause you troubles if you are using the integrated audio chip of your computer (which is usually of a very poor quality).

Melthodic

I'm actually using voicemeeter ASIO to both my USB headphones and my focusrite 2i2 gen3. I switched it to my focusrite ASIO directly to see if it still does it after that. Will update when I find out.

Note: I don't have any network drives. There is no latency, just crackling/distorted audio while it's not in the foreground.

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