For the past two or three weeks, audio has increasingly started to stutter while watching videos on YouTube. The problem becomes worse the longer a video plays, and it has occasionally happened with Facebook Reels and videos in VLC as well. Restarting the laptop helps temporarily, but the issue eventually returns.
So far, I have reinstalled the audio drivers, changed the audio sample rate, switched the power plan to best performance, tested Firefox in Safe Mode, disabled add-ons and plug-ins, reinstalled Firefox, turned off hardware acceleration, disabled Firefox's media.wmf.dxva.d3d11.enabled setting, and updated the BIOS. None of these has fixed the problem.
The stuttering occurs through both my JBL Tune 520BT headset and the laptop's built-in speakers, so it does not seem limited to one output device. I would prefer not to reinstall Windows unless it is clearly necessary.
The laptop is an HP ZBook 17 G5 running Windows 11 Pro for Workstations 25H2, with an Intel Xeon E-2176M, 32 GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA Quadro P5200 with 16 GB of VRAM. What could cause this kind of gradually worsening audio stutter, and what troubleshooting steps should I try next?
1 Answer
Since it happens through both the JBL headset and the built-in speakers, the problem probably is not a single faulty speaker or headset. It would be useful to test each output separately and check whether the issue also occurs in a local video player such as VLC. Because a reboot clears it temporarily, pay attention to background processes, driver activity, and system resource usage when the stuttering returns. That can help distinguish an audio-output problem from a broader Windows, graphics, or latency issue.
I normally use the JBL Tune 520BT, but the same stuttering also occurs through the laptop speakers, so it is definitely not limited to the headset.