2012 Legacy with sputter/tick at cold start

[mackerel]

Hi everyone. My first post here. My Legacy started making a sputtering/ticking sound at cold start. Car starts up @ 1500 RPM but as the RPM drops to 1100-1200 there is an intermittent sputtering sound. When I give the car a little gas the sound goes away and it seems to go away completely after driving it around or when the idle RPM drops to around 900. Not sure if it's serious but still bothersome. Anybody know what it could be?

The sputter starts at around the 1:30 mark.

[dgoodhue]

I would check the exhaust heat shields to make sure none of them are loose. That noise isn't normal but it doesn't sound like a major internal problem though either.

[stewdogg]

Sounds like a belt chirp to me. Either a worn out belt tensioner or some chirpy bearings in a pulley in the drive belt system. Unless I'm not hearing it correctly from the video.

[mackerel]

Update:

I took a look under the hood to locate the sound but the sputter was drowned out by the engine noise. It was more apparent underneath the car. So I figured the drive belts and bearings were fine. Heat shields behind the engine were fine too. The sputter was loudest in front of the engine, beneath the drive belt system. And lo and behold there was a heat shield there (exhaust cross over pipe? Catalytic converter? Not sure what the actual part is called) that was just a tiny bit loose. I tightened it up with a hose ring and no noise since.