What's fixed
DS5 speaker crackling/pulsating sound in some games (reported: Horizon Forbidden West).
Root cause
The audio buffer default was lowered to 16 in v1.2.14 to reduce haptic latency. While this works well for many setups, it leaves too little headroom for Bluetooth scheduling jitter on some games — the controller underruns its internal speaker buffer and produces a crackling/pulsating sound.
Fix
Default audio_buffer_length raised from 16 → 32. This preserves most of the latency improvement from v1.2.14 while absorbing normal BT jitter variance.
Note: If you still experience issues you can adjust the buffer freely in the config app (16–128). Lower = less latency, higher = more stable audio.
How to update
Flash the .uf2 file: hold the BOOTSEL button on the Pico 2W while plugging it in, then drag-and-drop the file onto the drive that appears.