Crackpot: Greetings, General Discussion.

My sound is crackling. It's driving me nuts.

Updated a bunch of drivers, tried disabling/un-installing a bunch of devices (used and unused - replaced USB mouse with PS/2 mouse, for instance), tried various things that were suggested by various random strangers to other random strangers on the Internet who had audio issues.
I re-installed my stupid USB drivers *#*$!**!
Un-installed avast! (got BitDefender instead).
De-activated Windows Firewall.
Disabled AMD HD Audio. (Bastard won't let me un-install.)
Win7 btw, also Realtek onboard sound and
AMD FX-6300
ASUS M5A78L-M LX
AMD Radeon HD 7770
400 Watt be quiet!
2x 4GB DDR3 RAM

This nonsense may be related to DPC latency, although to be honest, I have no bloody idea what that even means; just that I used LatencyMon to monitor this obscurity and it shows red spikes all over, mostly caused by USBPort.sys. Ataport.sys too, though not as much. Could be IRQ too but I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS EITHER. I've spent the past few days googling and doing the most random stuff.
I'm a computer idiot. Don't want to do anything drastic like new hardware or an OS re-install because there's a very high probabilty I'll just break more stuff and unfortunately I don't have my own personal computer person IRL.
The crackling mostly occurs when I use my mouse - seems to make sense, if it is related to the USB port. Though it still crackles with a PS/2 mouse. I've been playing Arcanum and that's where I first noticed it as I scrolled around the map to check my surroundings (not everywhere - interiors mostly). It's worse when I'm watching Youtube videos and then do something in a different tab at the same time. Also when listening to music (Winamp) and browsing the Internet. Whenever I click/scroll/move cursor. You'd think that if it were hardware related, I'd get crackling all the time, no matter what - not just when I do something with the mouse.

I don't know when or why it started, exactly, and refuse to believe it's been around for a while and I just never noticed. I may be unobservant but I'm not completely oblivious, I think. So it's probably recent. It's like everything I did to try and solve it just made it worse but that may be my imagination. I hope so.
Don't think I made any changes lately that would explain this.
SOMEONE please help me. I'm 87% sure my head is going to explode soon. :|
Give me a one click solution that makes me look like more of a dunce than I thought I was.

(Why am I posting this here and not on a forum specifically designed for these sorts of problems? Because people scare me and I've been lurking here for a while so it's slightly less scary. Also, you got smart people here, right? I thought I'd seen some at some point but my memory is hazy.
On a more gaming related note, I have GOG codes for System Shock 2 & Torchlight, if anyone wants those - do they expire, btw? I'll flip a coin. Not restricted to people who can solve the problem as it's starting to feel so obscure that I don't know if there IS a damn solution.)

Sorry about the long-winded post too. The first sentence is actually kind of a tl;dr summary.

Zoltan999: Just a shot in the dark here, because I had the same thing happen to me a few years ago on my desktop system. Turned out it was the external speakers themselves. I replaced them, and all was good again. If you're talking a laptop, this may or may not apply to you....'specially if it's your "onboard" speakers. Just thought I'd let you know my experience, and what my problem was. Good luck, that crackling sound will drive ya nuts, so hope you can track down the problem soon bro

RWarehall: You could try turning the speakers down and PC sound up and visa versa. See if playing with the levels helps (if you do not have other speakers to try.

Phc7006: It's not clear from you post wheter you use the audio output from your motherboard, a dedicated audio card or the audio output from your video card through its HDMI port, nor if you use separate speakers, a headset or speakers integrated in a screen

I would start by connecting another headset or other speakers to the audio output, so as to exclude the possibility of defective speakers.

I would then check the drivers being used. If your hdmi drivers and the audio driver for the motherboard are active together, you could get weird results.

RWarehall: Have you tried going into your properties of your sound devices? You could try dropping the channels bits and Hz under the advanced settings (at least in Vista). Barring that I read something about someone solving it by buying a USB hub powered by a different wall outlet and plugging USB devices in that.

bell02: plug in headphones to hear if it's still there.
If it still noticable then maybe there are some latency issues with your audio driver.

check if;
-it is to high (48.000hz -studio quality 41.000 - DVD quality etc..)

-if it is only in a game (maybe a game issue with your sound driver)

bell02: -if something running in the background , using to much RAM (right click on task, task manager, google conspicuous programms that use to much)

--about ram and sound glichtes, if a game (for example) use to much ram, frames drops and sound start to glicht (crackling)

bell02: -use ccleaner and adwcleaner (google it)
...and maybe, on top of that defragment the HDD

bell02: [sorry for my bad english, it is not my native language]

RWarehall: Such latency can be caused by real-time virus protection as well (where it is always scanning active processes) of course that is often due for your own protection. You could try disabling that for a moment in whatever anti-virus program you use.

Crackpot: Un-installed avast! (got BitDefender instead).
De-activated Windows Firewall.

Crackpot: Check. Not only in games - that was just the first time I really noticed it.Crackpot: I'm a little paranoid anyway when it comes to processes so I check those a lot and google things I don't know. RAM shouldn't be an issue, at least if All CPU Meter is correct. When this whole thing started I also went and disabled a lot of non-essential start-up programs, none of which helped.Crackpot: I do use CCleaner whenever I un-install something and sometimes just randomly.
Defrag - Win7 claims it does that once a week and whenever I check my HDD it says it doesn't need one. Though here's where my computer illiteracy comes into play again - should I do that anyway?Crackpot: Ist doch gar nicht schlecht. Ich hab schon wesentlich schlimmeres von "original englischen" Menschen gesehen. :p

Crackpot: -snip-

Palidor12: 1) Is the crackling sound constantly there? and
2) Do you use wireless internet?

Reason I ask these two questions is something similar happened to me a few months ago. I would have crackling sounds coming through the speakers but ONLY when my internet connection was active. I moved the wireless antenna farther away from my desktop and that solved the problem.

bell02: ...
Vielleicht ist dein Netzteil auch nicht stark genug denn sound treiber mit zu tragen...k,.a. ob 400 Watt ausreichen? (entsprechend des Innenlebens deines Rechners!?)

bell02: ab hier bin ich leider mit meinem Algebra zu ende,.. ich drück dir die Daumen!