Audio Crackling in Main Menu [Steam 1.16.6 - Win 10]

[Mevnie]

I decided to install the latest stable BfW from Steam after a Windows reinstall.
However, whenever I launch the game and get to the main menu, the music crackles a bit. And when I press the buttons on the menus, the sound effects are also crackling. From what my ears can tell, the crackling seems to be coming mainly from the left audio channel.

This happens to me every time I start the game.

The crackling seems to be worse if you turn the sound sliders down a bit, but disappears when you disable sounds completely. I would prefer to play with sounds on though.

My current audio device in-use are earphones, using Realtek Audio (aux slot in my desktop computer). There are no issues with playing music or sounds from other sources than BfW.

Here is the build information.

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The Battle for Wesnoth version 1.16.6 x86_64
Running on Microsoft Windows 10 21H2 (10.0.19044) x86_64
Distribution channel: Steam

Game paths
==========

Data dir:        C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\wesnoth
User config dir: C:\Users\USER\Documents\My Games\Wesnoth1.16
User data dir:   C:\Users\USER\Documents\My Games\Wesnoth1.16
Saves dir:       C:\Users\USER\Documents\My Games\Wesnoth1.16\saves
Add-ons dir:     C:\Users\USER\Documents\My Games\Wesnoth1.16\data\add-ons
Cache dir:       C:\Users\USER\Documents\My Games\Wesnoth1.16\cache

Libraries
=========

Boost:             1.79
Lua:               5.4.2
OpenSSL/libcrypto: 1.1.1o (runtime 1.1.1o)
Cairo:             1.17.6 (runtime 1.17.6)
Pango:             1.50.7 (runtime 1.50.7)
SDL:               2.0.22 (runtime 2.0.22)
SDL_image:         2.0.5 (runtime 2.0.5)
SDL_mixer:         2.0.4 (runtime 2.0.4)

Features
========

Lua console completion:       yes
Win32 notifications back end: yes

Current video settings
======================

SDL video drivers:       [windows] dummy
Window size:             1600x900
Screen refresh rate:     60
Screen dots per inch:    96.000000x96.000000
Screen dpi scale factor: 1.000000x1.000000

Current audio settings
======================

SDL audio drivers:  [wasapi] directsound
Number of channels: 2
Output rate:        48000 Hz
Sample format:      signed 16 bit little-endian
Sample size:        4096 bytes

Installed add-ons
=================

No add-ons installed.

And the latest game log from the last time I launched the game:

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Battle for Wesnoth v1.16.6 x86_64
Started on Fri Oct 21 16:58:27 2022

Automatically found a possible data directory at C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\wesnoth
20221021 16:58:27 error config: Invalid data in credentials file

Data directory:               C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\wesnoth
User configuration directory: C:\Users\USER\Documents\My Games\Wesnoth1.16
User data directory:          C:\Users\USER\Documents\My Games\Wesnoth1.16
Cache directory:              C:\Users\USER\Documents\My Games\Wesnoth1.16\cache

Setting mode to 1600x900
Checking lua scripts... ok

I would also like to note that I did have some old saves from 1.14 and a previous install of 1.16 before my Windows reinstall, but after I noticed those, I deleted the folders along with their contents, but the issues still persist after a few fresh reinstalls on Steam.

The language I initially used in-game was Finnish (Suomi), which is my default system language, but I switched it to English (US). The issue happens regardless of language though, as far as I can tell.

I tried to search if this bug/issue has been encountered before, but according to Steam forums apparently it's something only a few users have had in the past at random.

[Pentarctagon]

A similar issue was reported here as well, due to using a separate sound card.