[Solution] for crackling noise/too much distortion

[m3nding]

Greetings friends,

after encountering both problems which I just named in the title I did a lot of research to find a solution which fixes everything in a fine way and I am making this post because I'm quite certain that more people will encounter this problem after a Windows 10 upgrade.
So, what is this all about?
Many of you might not know this problem. You can encounter a crackling noise in Rocksmith which you might have read you will get away with turning Win32UltraLowLatencyMode to 0.
This might occur with certain sound cards like the Xonar DS or everything else which is not onboard.
But this might result in a sound with too much distortion and a ugly latency.
But fear not my friend, because here is an solution! (which worked for me at least)


So, tl;dr, here is the solution:

-select your audio output which you want to use and use the 48k,16 bit format
  (like this: http://imgur.com/9zzkY9M)

-go to your rocksmith.ini which is located in the instalation folder (Steam\steamapps\common\Rocksmith2014) and open it up and simply copy the following to the audio section

>[Audio]
>EnableMicrophone=0
>ExclusiveMode=0
>LatencyBuffer=1
>ForceDefaultPlaybackDevice=1
>ForceWDM=0
>ForceDirectXSink=0
>Win32UltraLowLatencyMode=1
>DumpAudioLog=0
>MaxOutputBufferSize=0


now you should be good to go, not too much distortion, no crackling noises and good quality with every sound card.

 

Have a nice day!

 

p.s.:

Should this be posted in the wrong place please move it where it belongs, thank you!

Only trying to be helpful :)

[bustakun]

I get this when Win 10 auto update is set to grab drivers, theres an hd audio driver for my laptop that causes the crackle pop.

[Alex360]

Here's some info on audio setup for rocksmith:
"
If you are having sound-related issues with Rocksmith 2014 Edition, you should start by viewing the "RocksmithConfiguration.pdf" file that can be found in the game's default install folder:

C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Rocksmith2014

Config related lection

The two configuration sections below are a good place to start in order to get the most out of Rocksmith 2014:


Rocksmith Audio Configuration

You should be able to adjust the most important audio settings inside Rocksmith 2014 itself. Settings pertaining to audio are found under Tools off the main menu. From there, select Options.
This will open a submenu to let you change various system and game options. Choose Audio Settings to change your audio configuration.

In the Audio Settings menu, you have three settings you can adjust.
The first option is Microphone settings, which allows you to enable or disable your microphone for singing along with the game.

The second is Audio Engine Settings. This lets you adjust the size of one audio buffer the game uses. A smaller value will use a smaller buffer. Smaller buffers mean lower latency, but increase the demands on your PC to avoid audio crackling. Most recent high performance PC's can handle a setting of 2. The fastest PC's might be able to run reliably at 1.

The other setting you have access to is Audio Exclusivity. This switch will tell Rocksmith 2014 whether you want the game to grab exclusive access to your audio devices. In general, exclusive access will allow the game more control over audio settings and allow the audio to run better. However, you will not hear any other sounds while the game is running. Additionally, some other applications may need to be restarted before they will play sounds again. If you’re only playing the game, and can give exclusive access to Rocksmith 2014, set this to “On”. This is the default value. If you turn off Audio Exclusivity, you may need to increase the Audio Engine Settings value to get the best audio performance or to get rid of crackling.


Rocksmith Audio Configuration (Advanced Mode)

Although some audio options are accessible through the Rocksmith 2014 menus, for complete control, locate the Rocksmith.INI file. It's located in the same folder as the Rocksmith 2014 application. If you installed Steam in the default location, this will be C:\ProgramFiles\Steam\SteamApps\Common\Rocksmith2014.

You can also locate this file through the Steam client. If you're in the Library view of Steam, right click on Rocksmith 2014, select Properties, choose the Local Files tab, and click on Browse Local Files. That will open an explorer window and the Rocksmith.INI file will be in that folder, provided you've already run Rocksmith 2014 once.

Open that file in a text editor (Notepad), and we'll walk through each of the options.

When changing these settings, change one setting at a time then launch the game and test out the audio in the main menu. If you hear crackling or other audio issues, back out your most recent change.


Rocksmith INI File Details
There are two major sections to the Rocksmith.INI file. The first controls the audio settings of Rocksmith 2014:

EnableMicrophone [default: 0] - Set this value to 1 to enable the use of voice microphone. This is duplicated in the Rocksmith menus.

ExclusiveMode [default: 1] - Set this value to 0 if you want to have other audio programs running at the same time as Rocksmith 2014. You may need to increase your LatencyBuffer setting to avoid audio issues if you choose to disable Exclusive Mode.

LatencyBuffer [default: 4] - This value allows you to adjust one of the audio buffers used in one area of the Rocksmith 2014 audio engine. A smaller value will use a fewer buffers. Fewer buffers mean lower latency, but increase the demands on your PC to avoid audio crackling. Most recent high performance PCs can handle a setting of 2. The fastest PCs might be able to run reliably at 1. This value only supports whole numbers.

ForceWDM [default: 0] - Set this value to 1 if you've tried the fine tuning configuration options and still cannot get good audio latency or have audio issues you cannot resolve. This will force the game to use the previous Windows mechanism to control your audio devices. It can impose higher latency than the default system, but is a good fallback.

ForceDirectXSink [default: 0] - Set this value to 1 if you've tried all other configuration options and still cannot get good audio. This forces the game to use an old Windows mechanism to control your audio devices. It will almost always impose high latency, but should allow you to run the game. Use this as your last option.

DumpAudioLog [default: 0] - Set this value to 1 if you need to send debugging information to Ubisoft. It will create a text file called audiodump.txt, located in the same directory as the Rocksmith application. Once you have run the game with this switched on, be sure to set the value back to 0. Leaving the audio log enabled can degrade performance so leave it set to 0 for normal gameplay.

Win32UltraLowLatencyMode [default:1] - Set this value to 0 if you're having trouble getting the game to have good audio performance. This will drop the game back to the original Rocksmith audio settings and may resolve some audio crackling issues at the cost of some of the Rocksmith 2014 latency improvements.

MaxOutputBufferSize [default: 0] - A few audio devices have been found to have very large output buffers. In this case, the game does its best to choose a reliable audio buffer size. However, you might find that setting this variable will help to resolve audio issues. In its default setting of 0, it leaves the configuration of this value up to Rocksmith. Most audio cards end up using an audio buffer size of 1024. Fast PCs can usually run with this at 512. If you have disabled Exclusive Mode, you may need to use a higher setting for this. We haven’t run into any specific issues regarding the choice of values for MaxOutputBufferSize, but you have have better luck using multiples of 8 or 32.

Audio engine settings for manual setting posted by someone from CF at reddit :D

These are the values for the audio engine setting 2 and 4.
The formula to calculate the latency is (MaxOutputBufferSize*Audio Engine=x);x/48= xxms, i.e. (96*2=192);192/48= 4ms

Audio Engine=2
MaxOutputBufferSize=96 = 04ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=192 = 08ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=288 = 12ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=384 = 16ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=480 = 20ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=576 = 24ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=672 = 28ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=768 = 32ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=864 = 36ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=960 = 40ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=1056 = 44ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=1152 = 48ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=1248 = 52ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=1344 = 56ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=1440 = 60ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=1536 = 64ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=1632 = 68ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=1728 = 72ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=1824 = 76ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=1920 = 80ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=2016 = 84ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=2112 = 88ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=2208 = 92ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=2304 = 96ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=2400 = 100ms

Audio Engine=4
MaxOutputBufferSize=48 = 04ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=96 = 08ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=144 = 12ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=192 = 16ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=240 = 20ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=288 = 24ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=336 = 28ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=384 = 32ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=432 = 36ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=480 = 40ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=528 = 44ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=576 = 48ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=624 = 52ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=672 = 56ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=720 = 60ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=768 = 64ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=816 = 68ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=864 = 72ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=912 = 76ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=960 = 80ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=1008 = 84ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=1056 = 88ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=1104 = 92ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=1152 = 96ms
MaxOutputBufferSize=1200 = 100ms

 

 

[between3and26]

Dear, this idea was not helpful to me, any other idea? :S Thank you

[rabidrock]

Have you tried other USB ports?

 

Made sure the USB is pushed in all the way?

 

[Gaboros]

This post did the trick! Finally my guitar sound like a guitar and not a toy keyboard. :)
Can't even compare the two! Thank you very much!