I have a sigmatel soundcard. Back when I had XP installed on this machine, there were no sound problems at all. Now, whenever I listen to anything such as music or watch a video, there is often a crackling sound that accompanies it. Any suggestions?
Update your sound drivers? There was a bad set of drivers for my onboard sound that made things staticy. Make sure your audio plugs are in and seated properly (try rotating it a bit -- it work) or try new cables. Play with the volume settings a bit... Open the mixer and lower all the Applications, but raise the Device volume.
I got Conexant HD smartaudio 221 and have a similar problem in Win 7 but its only shows up while installing updates it seems. Really weird but when I used one of the update packs by George.King every time something began to install there was a skipping, garbled cracking type noise. Dont remember any MP3 playing.
This can be your harddrive. An ASRock board i had a couple of years ago did that too. Every movement of the mouse and every single harddrive operation would result in a crackling noise overlayed by a very high-frequency 'hissing' sound. Very nasty...needless to say that this really annoyed the living hell out of me. Eventually i disabled the onboard sound and put a soundcard in. After that i never heard the noises again...
Realtek on some cards makes some noise too with Windows 7. Not everyone notices it but those that do find it annoying. It seems to be common with Windows 7...
I remember having a similar issue when i first started using win7 but installing one of the soundcard updates on WU fixed it
I found that this is solely due to cheap insulation of the onboard components. (Which means it is ultimately the 'fault' of the mainboard manufacturer, not the codec manufacturer.) For instance: The above mentioned ASRock had an Realtek ALC650 and it hummed, cr**kled and hissed like mad. No way anyone would not hear that as it was really importunate. However, the EPoX that i had before the ASRock had the same codec on board and it was silent like the proverbial forest at night. Obviously EPoX did a much better job at insulating the components so that a 'talkover' would not occur.
It was a fairly common problem with the beta and several sound cards, it is a matter of finding the right driver... I suggest trying windows update and manufacturers drivers for Seven, Vista and XP as well, probably in that order..