Asrock Fatal1ty Z370 Gaming K6 buzzing audio

From reading many hours on other manufacturer forums for similar z370 intel boards with ALC1220, it seems this intermittent 'popping' and 'crackling' sound interference is indeed widespread.
Of course the blame game begins, and it's never got anything to do with the mobo manufacturer - it's like they all think they are these completely innocent bystanders, yet they manufactured the boards and should have a responsibility to their customers to ensure these issues don't happen.

There's so many potential variable and I've lost days trying to resolve this.

Microsoft generic HD Audio drivers seem to be the most reliable, but still exhibit the same issues here and there. The Microsoft drivers at least allow the front audio panel (headphones for most users) to work without screeching distortion.
And one big difference - the Microsoft driver actually show two separate entries in Windows for headphones connected to the front audio panel and desktop speakers connected to the rear motherboard 'green' connection. Not sure why Realtek took this very basic feature away, so if you have both speakers and headphones connected they just show as one entry "speakers" and you have to physically remove the headphone jack from your front panel if you want to use your desktop speakers when you should be able to simply disable them when not in use from Windows sound settings.

Similarly, much older Realtek drivers seems to be quite close to the Microsoft drivers in terms of severity and frequency of these sound issues.

I honestly believe the best solution is to buy a cheaper PCIe sound card (Xonar DGX) and just be done with it and get back to gaming and the things you enjoy.

Is this a great solution? No, because we purchased these boards because of all the promises about great sound and EMI shielding and Japanese capacitors etc.
But AsRock literally refuses to acknowledge this is an issue, at least the guys in the Asus forums have admitted something is wrong.

But they can't fix it either, and it's tough to find a compatible board that doesn't have Realtek.
 

I am currently using Realtek v8210 that I found on softpedia or something like that. It has been mostly ok, but still the occasional pop and click in music playback. Don't notice it much in games likely because there's so many other loud noises in the games I play.

Good luck.