Has there ever been a fix?

I had a quick look at Google and while there are plenty of people having problems with the crackling/looping sound effects I haven't seen anyone find a solution to fix it.

Unfortunately there is only one solution: Windows 98. Not compatibility mode but actual OS.
These problems have been present ever since Windows XP.
I still have problems with my 2 Win XP PCs but it "almost" works on my Win 7 laptop (I have to restart after some time ranging from 30 minutes to 2 hours).

It's not as bad now. Still getting some popping sounds every now and again but they're faint.
I didn't do anything either. I carried on playing and it just stopped doing it.

I had a problem that the sound would be "saved" after a certain length of time of playing the game, and after a while it would just keep playing a certain sound and continue layering on top of it until it was just a meaningless cacaphony. Then I'd close the damn game and restart it and it would be back to normal. Of course, since you can't save your place, I'd have to wait until I got to another warp gate before I could quit.