Audio popping issue

[OmniusOmnium]

while I'm unsure if a gpu would act as a sound card itself (google isn't really giving me a clear answer), that does indeed make me think it's a thing with asus motherboards themselves, as realtek is an asus thing, and I've yet to see anyone with this same issue that *hasn't* had an asus MB... definitely seems to be the common factor.

As far as I understand it the GPU and the Motherboard "Sound Cards" are completely independent. The HDMI out runs on Nvidia drivers and can be used even when the onboard soundcard, which runs on realtek drivers, has been completely disabled. I think most modern GPUs have on board sound cards for HDMI and DVI outputs.

Edit: I just did a bit of research, the GPU doesn't actually do any sound processing as such because it just parses a digital audio stream to whatever external DAC you have it plugged into. In my case a TV screen, so it's actually the TVs internal sound card that is doing all the sound processing and conversion in that instance. But still has the issue so leads me to believe that this is a software issue not a hardware one.