Audio problems on new Alienware 17 but only when there's no internet

Everytime I used my laptop to watch some videos in the train I had issues with the audio: sound randomly disappearing and minor distortions from time to time. What I found was very surprising: turning on games on Steam (so far it's Hammerwatch and Risen 2) fixed the problem, then I could turn off the game and keep watching videos without problems. Tried figuring out the problem at home and the problems disappeared when I would turn on the wifi... So far I have no idea what is the root of the problem, but it would be great to fix this annoyance.