It's actually quite a tricky problem
Crackling and popping audio in Windows 10? Here’s what finally fixed it.
If you have a Windows 7 computer with a Realtek sound chipset or drivers, you may have encountered an issue where you hear intermittent crackling, popping, or noise when playing audio through your speakers or even headphones.
I realized after some research that this is quite a tricky problem to solve and that it can be caused by all sorts of issues, from latency to drivers to other hardware, etc., etc. In this article, I'm going to try to go through all the possible solutions to fix the audio noise on your Windows 7 machine. If you find another solution that works for you, drop a comment and let us know.
Of course, the first thing you should try to do in these situations is to update your drivers. In the case of crackling and popping audio, you should update your BIOS drivers, video drivers, and sound card drivers. Since many of these components are connected in some way, it’s a good idea to update as many hardware drivers as possible, not just the sound drivers.
