Stuttering / Choppy playback / Exports? Try unplugging your headset

[sørent]

Hi

For a day now, I have had a very annoying issue with Premiere Pro CC.

Long story short: It suddenly startet stuttering / becoming choppy both in playback and in my exported media files. Also in projects, that had previously worked perfectly. So we knew it couldn't be the original files.
I did everything to fix it. I updated all my drivers, uninstalled and installed updates, uninstalled and installed each and every Adobe product, ect.

Nothing worked.

Not until my IT colleague casually mentioned, that one of his friends once had to update a driver for a microphone, before his game (which didn't use the microphone) would work.
We both looked at my USB headset (sennheiser D 10 BS) , which I had plugged in. We exchanged disbelieving looks.

I unplugged it. And everything went back to normal.

I used a whole day trying to fix the issue - it sucked!
It had nothing to do with my Premiere Pro - and I have no idea how it fixed the issue. It just did.

I only write this post to help people finding themselves in a simular situation, as I spend nearly 2 hours reading through posts on this forum, where people had been (correctly) helped, yet it didn't do anything to fix my problem (as it wasn't an issue with the adobe product)

Btw, I use a Lenovo T470 - just in case you were wondering.

[Vidya Sagar · Accepted solution]

Hi sørent,

Thanks for the post. Can you please try the following steps & let us know the status. 

1. Plug the headset to the machine

2. In Premiere Pro Preferences > Audio Hardware > Default Input > Change to "No Input"

3. Try playback & test.

Thanks,

Vidya

[sørent]

Hi Vidya,

It worked - the playback is as usual now.

[Vidya Sagar]

Hi sørent,

Thanks for testing. As you mentioned, it is certainly an issue with input device driver.

Vidya.

[defaultz8pdh4my4k6a]

3 years later and I had the same experience. I changed my USB headset (Razor Kraken) to have "No Input" for Default Input device and my stuttering is gone. 
Thank you.