Audio poping

Severe audio popping/crackling when thrusters engage

I’m having a very persistent audio issue in Space Engineers 1

Whenever Ion or Hydrogen Thrusters engage, I get a very noticeable pop/crackle/clipping sound. On a small builder ship this becomes extremely annoying, because the thrusters are constantly engaging in short bursts.

The issue happens in both Realistic and Arcade sound modes.

Things I already tested:

48 kHz output format

restarting the game

disabling Doppler

disabling “Speed based ship sounds” — this actually made the thruster audio worse

disabling Windows audio enhancements / exclusive mode options

local xaudio2_9.dll override

checking the game logs for obvious audio errors

None of these fixed it.

My actual output is plain stereo through Realtek/MSI audio. Virtual Surround is disabled.

I found one recent Keen support report describing a very similar issue: static crackle when small Ion/Hydrogen Thrusters start playing, but there do not seem to be many current reports of it.

What makes this even stranger is that I used to play an older installation of Space Engineers in the past and did not have this problem. Unfortunately I no longer have any way to determine exactly which version that was.

At the moment I have no practical workaround. The only way to fully avoid the sound is to mute the game / audio output, which obviously is not acceptable.

Has anyone else encountered this on current builds? Especially with Realtek audio?

If yes, did you find any actual fix?

I can provide logs and additional technical details if needed.

Edit:

This is not specific to Realtek, it is the same on an external USB sound card

I have also noticed similar popping with some other dynamically triggered sounds, for example while walking inside a pressurized oxygen-filled cabin, so the issue may not be limited to thrusters.