Stuttered audio in VLC 2.1.2 on Windows when Opera Browser runs

Hi,

this is my first VLC bug report, so please apologize if there is any missing information.

Problem:

Audio output stutters in VLC 2.1.2 on this particular Windows 7 SP1 (32-bit) installation when VLC 2.1.2 (i.e. the VLC player, not talking about the browser plugin) and version 12.16 of the Opera web browser are opened at the same time.

Problem occurs even when there is no audio playing activity in Opera 12.16.

Problem occurs regardless of whether a video or plain audio file is played in VLC.

VLC is set to default settings. Resetting settings did not help.

Switching the audio renderer between DirectX and WaveOut did not help, either.

Task manager shows no high load on the system.

Only if Opera (12.16) is not running, VLC would correctly play audio.

Windows Media player does not exhibit this problem in conjunction with the Opera browser.

It seems this particular problem has been reported on the forums before:

https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=115452

In my case, however, downgrading to VLC 2.1.0 did not help. I will try downgrading further.

I have been using VLC and Opera (<= 12.16) for years, but never experienced this problem, except for this particular Windows 7 SP1 machine. Its a fresh Windows 7 installation (plus drivers).

Audio device is "Realtek High Definition Audio" "ALC882", driver version 6.0.1.7083 by Realtek. Using the generic Microsoft "High Definition Audio" driver that comes with the OS instead (version 6.1.7601.17514) does not solve the problem.