Recently had a problem with my Realtek audio occasionally crackling/popping when visiting content heavy web-pages in Windows 8.
Reading about this on-line indicated it was a problem with high latency causing the audio data (real-time) to miss or skip - was recommended to download LatencyMon which can give breakdown of interrupt process latency and DPC routine execution time.
Running LatencyMon while web-browsing revealed the problem was the NDIS 6.30 driver for Windows 8 from Microsoft - it was producing latencies between 5ms - 30ms when visiting some web-sites, this was causing my audio to crackle & pop. NDIS is the Network Driver Interface Specification API for network interface cards. Because NDIS was the culprit, a lot of web-sites recommended installing new drivers for the WIFI card, changing Power settings, updating audio driver, using wired Ethernet, etc. I tried all of this but it did not work.
Finally, I read on some Norton Community forum that the Intrusion Prevention feature from Norton can cause high latencies and that disabling it can solve the problem. I disabled the Intrusion Prevention option from my Norton Antivirus and immediately my latency came down - Now I'm getting a max latency of 4 ms from the NDIS driver & my audio does not crackle/pop anymore.
Request someone from Norton to look into this latency problem with Windows 8.
Another thing, once I disable the Intrusion Prevention option, I'm getting the RED at Risk warning and the NAV icon has a red X. Since I want to disable this permanently, is there someone way to suppress the at Risk warning and change the NAV icon back to green check - given that I am consciously disabling Intrusion Prevention, NAV should not be flashing the warning sign.