Crackling noise in speakers

[\\-shanE]

I posted this in several hardware forums, but couldn't get any good replies, that's why I decided to post it here since we have some friendlier folks here.

Well, recently, I've been getting random crackles and pops in my speakers, especially when there are sounds being played. What I noticed is that the sound gets distorted more frequently when there's a higher hog in CPU usage.
At first, I thought it was my soundcard, but after troubleshooting it and testing it on another computer, I ruled out that possibility. However, my speakers produced perfect sound when I used an alternate source (my MP3 player).
I think this problem is because of 2 recent power failures in my home, twice in a row. But then again, it could be certain BIOS settings. Definitely not any software problems though, since I reformatted my computer twice to fix this thing.

Now the problem is that, I'm unsure if a speaker system can produce proper sound in another source, yet playing screwed up sound on a PC.
Or if there's another cause, could it be that there's improper settings or motherboard problem, etc? I disabled onboard audio already, tho'.

If needed, I'm currently using Altec Lansing 641 and Creative Audigy.

 

[jonnyapps]

i have an onboard nvidia soundcard and very recently started experiencing the same thing. I tried error correction whenever playing music but to no avail and up until last night i had associated the problem with itunes - it'd always start crackling after i'd been playing music for 40mins or so.

Last night however I was playing from a copied compilation cd with really bad distortion - error correction didn't help so i tried copying on hd. still was really bad crackling. However, when i removed the cd and played from hd the crackling stopped. That's as far as i've got investigating.

oh and my pc is newly formatted this morning

EDIT - i would be interested to hear the resolution to your problem if and when you find one as it may be related to mine. :dork:

 

[\\-shanE]

man, this is getting stranger. Now I think that it COULD be software related. I experimented with leaving the PC on idle, while playing an MP3, it played perfectly, till I launched an installation, then it started to get cranky. Any help?