I've searched for the past week without finding any true fixes:

My sound has crackling, popping and some static that randomly occurs.  While playing music, at any given volume, the it sounds distorted a little.

I'm running Win7 64 bit from Dell directly.  Just got the laptop a week ago, using original configuration out of the box.

IDT Audio Codec and NVIDIA HD Audio Drivers.  I've disabled, re-enabled, uninstalled, re-installed, looked for updates, etc.  Nothing is helping.

I ran the latency tool i've seen people recommend, didn't help.  I was also advised from a promising google search to disable power management from the IDT control panel.  Didn't help.

I tried a couple BIOS tweeks, didn't help.  Restored BIOS back to original config, and still have this issue.

This is quite annoying, and I can't figure out why this is so difficult to fix.  I'd appreciate any help out there.

 

Thanks!