Since I installed the KB3206632 update of December 13, 2016 that brought my installs of Windows 10 Pro x64 up to version 14393.576, (licensing service version 10.0.14393.351), the audio is much better, almost scratch free. I've had various levels of "scratchy" audio on my machines that was mostly tolerable since I've been using RTM Windows 10. Realtek hardware always worked (mostly) fairly well, still scratchy at times but not too bad. The worst performing audio by far of any of my machines has been on one particular laptop, an HP 6710B that was released on August 29, 2008 that came preinstalled with Vista Business and has ADI AD1981HD hardware (SoundMAX Integrated Digital HD Audio). The audio on this laptop with Windows 10 was pretty bad. The last driver made for it by HP is v6.10.2.5240 from November 20, 2009 for Windows 7 x86 and x64, and the KB3206632 update made a vast improvement especially to this laptop using this same driver. I've tried every other driver I could find but this one has always worked the best for me. So I'm wondering if the latest update helped the audio for most of you or not? And if so, was it mostly on older hardware, or for everything in general?
Crackling audio in 1607 was the main reason I switched to Windows 7 again. Glad to hear that, but (i guess) tha line "almost scratch free" scares me a lot) Anyway I will not leave w7 just for that now.
Oddly enough, now that you mention it, I indeed used to hear weak scratches in audio which are now absent. I have just realized this as a result of your post and don't know when they disappeared. For your info, my build ends in .576, my machine HP Desktop year 2016, and my sound device Realtek HD Audio.
I had popping on my ALC255 Skylake laptop on Windows 10. I believe the popping happened when the audio device had to wake up (no sounds being played for a while, and then suddenly playing a sound). It wasn't as-noticeable at some point last month, but was still present. No such pops happen on 7.