There’s a constant crackling sound coming from the audio. Both the speakers and headphones do not work, they both have the same crackling sound.
I tried turning off timer-based scheduling based on the official troubleshooting guidelines and also this post on the archived forum. However, it did not fix my issue.
I tried restarting the laptop, modifying alsa-base.conf, and even adding a boot parameter. However, none of them fixed my issue and I still get the crackling sound.
The sound was working perfectly until all of a sudden it just stopped. Literally nothing happened, I did not turn off the device, I did not update my laptop, essentially, I did nothing and it just stopped out of the blue.
I would really appreciate some help on resolving this situation. Thank you for your kind help and support! 
Thank you for guiding me to the right resources for providing relevant outputs @TriMoon! Please find them mentioned below.
$ inxi -Fazy
System:
Kernel: 5.8.11-1-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: N/A
parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.8-x86_64
root=UUID=e1cec159-110f-43a7-809a-d6aa6cf36829 rw intel_pstate=disable
Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.19.5 tk: Qt 5.15.1 info: latte-dock wm: kwin_x11
dm: SDDM Distro: Manjaro Linux
Machine:
Type: Laptop System: Acer product: Predator PH317-53 v: V1.04
serial: <filter> Chassis: type: 10 serial: <filter>
Mobo: CFL model: Alphard_CFS v: V1.04 serial: <filter> UEFI: Insyde v: 1.04
date: 06/19/2019
Battery:
ID-1: BAT0 charge: 42.4 Wh condition: 42.4/42.4 Wh (100%) volts: 16.4/15.4
model: SMP KT00407009 AP18E7M type: Li-ion serial: <filter> status: Full
Device-1: hidpp_battery_3 model: Logitech Wireless Mouse MX Master 3
serial: <filter> charge: 100% (should be ignored) rechargeable: yes
status: Discharging
CPU:
Topology: 6-Core model: Intel Core i7-9750H bits: 64 type: MT MCP
arch: Kaby Lake family: 6 model-id: 9E (158) stepping: A (10) microcode: D6
L2 cache: 12.0 MiB
flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
bogomips: 62431
Speed: 1214 MHz min/max: 800/2600 MHz boost: enabled Core speeds (MHz):
1: 1274 2: 1021 3: 1345 4: 1271 5: 1311 6: 1181 7: 1299 8: 1286 9: 1328
10: 1279 11: 1269 12: 1837
Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: KVM: VMX disabled
Type: l1tf
mitigation: PTE Inversion; VMX: conditional cache flushes, SMT vulnerable
Type: mds mitigation: Clear CPU buffers; SMT vulnerable
Type: meltdown mitigation: PTI
Type: spec_store_bypass
mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp
Type: spectre_v1
mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Full generic retpoline, IBPB: conditional,
IBRS_FW, STIBP: conditional, RSB filling
Type: srbds mitigation: Microcode
Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected
Graphics:
Device-1: Intel UHD Graphics 630 vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: i915
v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0 chip ID: 8086:3e9b
Device-2: NVIDIA TU116M [GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Mobile]
vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: nvidia v: 450.66
alternate: nouveau,nvidia_drm bus ID: 01:00.0 chip ID: 10de:2191
Device-3: Chicony HD User Facing type: USB driver: uvcvideo bus ID: 1-7:2
chip ID: 04f2:b64f serial: <filter>
Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.9 compositor: kwin_x11
driver: modesetting,nvidia display ID: :0 screens: 1
Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1920x1080 s-dpi: 75 s-size: 652x366mm (25.7x14.4")
s-diag: 748mm (29.4")
Monitor-1: eDP-1-1 res: 1920x1080 hz: 144 dpi: 128
size: 382x215mm (15.0x8.5") diag: 438mm (17.3")
OpenGL: renderer: GeForce GTX 1660 Ti/PCIe/SSE2 v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 450.66
direct render: Yes
Audio:
Device-1: Intel Cannon Lake PCH cAVS vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI
driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel alternate: snd_soc_skl,snd_sof_pci
bus ID: 00:1f.3 chip ID: 8086:a348
Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.8.11-1-MANJARO
Network:
Device-1: Qualcomm Atheros Killer E2500 Gigabit Ethernet
vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: alx v: kernel port: 3000
bus ID: 07:00.0 chip ID: 1969:e0b1
IF: enp7s0 state: down mac: <filter>
Device-2: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 vendor: Bigfoot Networks driver: iwlwifi
v: kernel port: 3000 bus ID: 08:00.0 chip ID: 8086:2723
IF: wlp8s0 state: up mac: <filter>
IF-ID-1: docker0 state: down mac: <filter>
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 1.14 TiB used: 478.44 GiB (40.9%)
SMART Message: Required tool smartctl not installed. Check --recommends
ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Western Digital model: PC SN720 SDAPNTW-256G-1014
size: 238.47 GiB block size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 31.6 Gb/s
lanes: 4 serial: <filter> rev: 10121000 scheme: GPT
ID-2: /dev/sda vendor: Seagate model: ST1000LM049-2GH172 size: 931.51 GiB
block size: physical: 4096 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s
rotation: 7200 rpm serial: <filter> rev: ACM1 scheme: GPT
Partition:
ID-1: / raw size: 221.11 GiB size: 216.64 GiB (97.98%)
used: 186.40 GiB (86.0%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2
Swap:
Kernel: swappiness: 60 (default) cache pressure: 100 (default)
ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 17.06 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2
dev: /dev/nvme0n1p3
Sensors:
System Temperatures: cpu: 53.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: nvidia temp: 40 C
Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info:
Processes: 311 Uptime: 3h 01m Memory: 15.49 GiB used: 4.22 GiB (27.2%)
Init: systemd v: 246 Compilers: gcc: 10.2.0 alt: 8/9 Packages: pacman: 1516
lib: 433 flatpak: 0 Shell: Zsh v: 5.8 running in: konsole inxi: 3.1.05
$ ls /var/log/
audit btmp btmp.1 Calamares.log cups faillog gssproxy gufw.log journal lastlog old pacman.log private samba tallylog wtmp wtmp.1 Xorg.0.log Xorg.0.log.old Xorg.1.log Xorg.1.log.old
Since the output of dmesg is huge, I’ve uploaded it to pastebin.
Please let me know for any other outputs that might help in debugging or solving this issue!
