[Fronsklu]

Recently my less than year old laptop has started making crackling noises that have made listening to music less than bearable. I researched what the possible problems were and after cleaning out my jacks and conducting a few tests on why it was crackling (such as checking diagnostics) I thought that it could be nothing other than a faulty sound card. I tried to update the drivers but it did no good. Today I had support come to my apartment and replace the motherboard because the sound card it attached. At first it seemed like the problem was fixed, but now, about 6 hours later i've noticed it again. It seems to happen more with low tones (but it could just stand out more because the crackling is high pitched). Does anyone have any idea what the problem could be?
 
The headphones are completely fine, I have tested them on my Ipod and they don't have the crackling. The only possibility I can think of is a software problem but I can't say I know too much about hardware.

 

[loopfreak]

Did you reinstall your sound drivers or did you only attempt an update (of the existing ones) ?
 
If only attempted an update try completely to uninstall driver / reset and then install manually  (probably realtek drivers)

 

[Agarvaen]

I would suggest updating BIOS first and then reinstalling drivers in safe mode.
 
After that please check if problem appears with music in various applications (windows media player, preferably foobar with wasapi to bypass windows mixer) playing and different media like audio cd, video, mp3, flac as well.
Also check if problem appears with inbuilt speakers.
Perhaps you do not know but all spare parts for computer manufacturers do not have to be new but also can be refurbished components.

 

[loopfreak]

I would say that updating a bios for novice user could be a little too much.

 

[Agarvaen]

For Dell system bios update is like any driver - just go to download drivers part of Dell website, let it autodetect service tag or just type it yourself and from the list choose bios. If you already have the same version or newer you should get a message that update will not be done.

 

[loopfreak]

If it is compleatly automated there should not be any problems.

 

[NamelessPFG]

My friend's Alienware M18x had sound issues as well. Occasional pops and other artifacts that were subtle over the built-in speakers, but irritatingly noticeable over headphones.
 
The weird thing is that they went away when I put it in Intel graphics mode. Sounded just fine, and DPC latency was noticeably lower. Get those SLI GTX 580Ms running again, though, and it came back.
 
If it has switchable graphics, try switching to integrated graphics and tell us if the sound problems go away or not.

 

[namaiki]

Are you using EQ or Windows 8?