Audio Glitching or Distorting in Windows 11? Turn Off Audio Enhancements

Published ✓ Verified ⏱️ 2 min read January 20, 2025 · by Ryan Bennett

Your sound glitches, crackles, distorts, or comes out oddly quiet in Windows 11 — and it started without any obvious cause.

Why: Windows and some sound drivers layer on “enhancements” (loudness equalization, virtual surround, effects). On many devices these cause distortion or crackling rather than improving anything. Turning them off is a quick, reversible test.

Fix 1: Switch off enhancements in Sound settings

Go to Start → Settings → System → Sound.
Under Output, click your audio device to open its page.
Find Audio enhancements and set it to Off (on some builds it’s under Advanced / Advanced settings).
Play something and listen for the glitch.

Fix 2: Disable them on the Enhancements tab

If you’d rather use the classic dialog, or the setting above didn’t help:

Right-click the Volume icon on the taskbar and select Sounds (or open Control Panel → Hardware and Sound → Sound).
On the Playback tab, select your device and click Properties.
Open the Enhancements tab and tick Disable all enhancements (or Disable all sound effects, depending on what you see), then OK.

Fix 3: Do the same for a glitchy microphone

If it’s your mic that sounds processed or drops out, enhancements (APOs) on the input can be the culprit:

Settings → System → Sound → Input, pick your microphone.
Open Device Properties → Additional device properties.
On the Enhancements tab, tick Disable all enhancements / Disable all sound effects, then OK. (If there’s no Enhancements tab, check the Advanced tab.)

FAQ

There’s no Enhancements tab or Audio enhancements option. Not every driver provides them — if it isn’t there, enhancements aren’t your problem. Try updating or rolling back the audio driver instead.

Turning them off fixed the distortion but lost a feature I liked. Re-enable a single effect at a time to find the one causing trouble, leaving the rest off.

Sources: Microsoft Support — Fix distorted or crackling audio in Windows · Microsoft Support — Disable Audio Enhancements