I was hearing intermittent faint crackles in my speakers, even with the system under light load and using large buffers, so I ran LatencyMon to see if any clues might pop out. Nothing did. DPC latencies are averaging around 5 us, with a maximum of 150 us. All well-within the green zone.
 
However, LM (ver 6.5) gave me this absurd piece of information:
 
    Reported CPU speed: 3991 MHz
    Measured CPU speed: 1 MHz (approx.)
 
 
Although certain that the CPU cannot possibly be actually running at 1 MHz, I used a tool called HWMonitor to check temperatures and clock speeds. It reports that the system is neither overheating nor overly throttled (measured clock speeds are between 4.1 and 4.4 GHz). My power plan is "High Performance", with the minimum (and maximum) processing state set to 100%. I have USB power saving turned off (irrelevant anyway as my audio interface is Firewire).
 
LatencyMon seems to be getting some math wrong.
 
Anyone seen this? I know, when you run LM you're not using it to verify your clock speed, so there's a good chance no one's noticed it even if it was happening. But I'd appreciate anybody just taking a look at LM on their system and letting me know if this feature is broken generally or if it might be a clue to my crackles.
 
 

bitflipper
I was hearing intermittent faint crackles in my speakers, even with the system under light load and using large buffers, so I ran LatencyMon to see if any clues might pop out. Nothing did. DPC latencies are averaging around 5 us, with a maximum of 150 us. All well-within the green zone.
 

can't comment on your latency mon question, but as regards faint crackles I'm having the EXACT same situation.
 
according to latency mon I have a super-smooth system, but I do get occasional crackles in playback, even at high ASIO/read/write buffers, of course non-reproducible ... with DAW offline (win10 pro, only win defender w/ all audio directories excluded) ... this even happens on audio only (no VSTi) projects ... currently thinking it's either Sonar itself or my HD growing old (???)
 

Mine shows the same, however you must have missed this included statement:
"WARNING: the CPU speed that was measured is only a fraction of the CPU speed reported. Your CPUs may be throttled back due to variable speed settings and thermal issues. It is suggested that you run a utility which reports your actual CPU frequency and temperature."

Yup, I get the 1 MHz reading here as well, but ignore it.  Checked with HWMonitor too.
 
Every time I hear a intermittent crackling sound in my speakers, if I disable my network adapter, it goes away

abacab
 
Every time I hear a intermittent crackling sound in my speakers, if I disable my network adapter, it goes away

I'm not connected. neither to LAN nor WiFi  - so does it still make any difference to disable it in device manager?

If you are not connecting, disable the NIC.
 
I had some crackling when I first got the MOTU 896mk3 Hybrid.  I reused the USB cable that I had been using with a Roland Octa-Capture and I would get some intermittent crackling on the output of the MOTU unit ONLY with Sonar.  I could close and restart Sonar and there may or may not be any crackling.  Turned out, in my case, the USB port that was being used was a USB 3.0 port (Intel USB 3.0).  I moved it to a USB 2.0 port and the crackling went away.  I later used a new USB 2.0 cable and connected it to a different USB 3.0 port and I haven't had any of the crackling.

It's probably a good idea to disable and/or unplug anything you aren't using.  I also go into my BIOS and disable onboard sound and the Ethernet port.  That way the OS never sees it.

Thanks for checking, abacab and fireberd. I'm just going to ignore the bogus CPU speed warning.
 
I've been trying various things to get to the bottom of my crackle problem. I'm convinced it's not buffer over/underruns or excessive DPC latency. ATM I'm thinking it isn't a digital problem at all, but in the analog signal chain.
 
I have turned down the input sensitivity control on my speakers 2 dB, and that may have cured the crackles. I have to qualify that with "may", because the problem is intermittent. If that does turn out to be the solution, then I'll be a little dismayed that my fancy new Emotivas don't have more preamp headroom.
 
Of course, they still have enough power to cause hearing damage. I've just tested them with Wagner's Die Walküre, followed by the 1812 Overture (with cannons) and Invincible (Two Steps from Hell) - at cinema volume - with no discernible distortion. Still loving these speakers!

Well my "fix" lasted two hours, then the crackles returned. Dang.
 
Because the noises seem to favor the left channel, I have physically swapped the two speakers to see if it moves. Fingers crossed it doesn't, as that would suggest a defective amplifier and that would make me very sad. 
 
Unfortunately, since the swap there haven't been any more crackles. That could still mean an amplifier problem: I turned them off to move them and that may have allowed the amps to cool. So I'm just going to have to sit here listening to Dream Theater at high volume for an hour or so. The suffering I endure in the name of high fidelity!
 
I know nobody cares about my crackles. I'm just posting this to keep track of my troubleshooting process. However, if anyone thinks of something I haven't tried yet, I'm all ears.
 

bitflipper
Well my "fix" lasted two hours, then the crackles returned. Dang.
 
Because the noises seem to favor the left channel, I have physically swapped the two speakers to see if it moves. Fingers crossed it doesn't, as that would suggest a defective amplifier and that would make me very sad. 
 
Unfortunately, since the swap there haven't been any more crackles. That could still mean an amplifier problem: I turned them off to move them and that may have allowed the amps to cool. So I'm just going to have to sit here listening to Dream Theater at high volume for an hour or so. The suffering I endure in the name of high fidelity!
 
I know nobody cares about my crackles. I'm just posting this to keep track of my troubleshooting process. However, if anyone thinks of something I haven't tried yet, I'm all ears.
 

Does your audio module have headphone outputs?  Check for the glitch through headphones.  That would rule out the amp and speakers ...
 
On the other hand, how much Dream Theater can your ears take with headphones?