Sound Crackling

[sennin]

Ive been experiencing sound crackling with my P5K-E motherboard. I just got it last week and I noticed it right away. I have all windows updates and I updated the soundmax driver but that hasn't helped.

Whenever some audio is played I'll get an occasional crackling sound(only lasts about a second or 2). It doesn't happen as much when Im playing games for some reason, but when listening to music it's pretty frequent and very annoying. Any ideas on what's wrong? Would getting an audio card fix the problem?

Thanks.

Edit: Ever since I installed the newest driver earlier today it actually seems more frequent

Edit2: I did some googling and found a post that seems to be my exact problem

Whenever I boot up windows and the startup music plays I heard a crackle or popping noise along with the wave file playing. If I plugged in a USB item like a memory stick I heard the same crackle or popping while the piece of hardware was being detected. When using the mouse the cursor would sometimes freeze for a second then reappear where it should have been once I stopped moving it. During games the video and/or sound would pause for a brief second then continue. Usually the pauses and noises only lasted a second or less. I tried everything I could think of, in the software department, to solve the problem before moving onto hardware but absolutely nothing worked. I tried all kinds of motherboard drivers and bios changes, used my soundcard or just the onboard sound, different videocards and even added a second power supply. The problem was on both OS'es even with clean installs of just one or the other. I contacted Intel, through email support after reading someone post that the pop noises might be CPU related, and was ensured by Intel it was a motherboard related problem. So I took the computer back to the store where I had bought most of the components and the owner kindly exchanged the motherboard with an Asus P5K-E (small upgrade charge) after hearing the noises for himself and I'm happy to say I haven't heard an unwanted snap, crackle or pop since. I have also read in other forums ppl complaining of these same odd noises from the P35 Chipset but can not directly link it to Asus's P5K but after changing the board the problem disappeared.

The part I bolded is also sometimes happening while playing games. So could the problem simply be a bad motherboard and I need to get it replaced?

[sennin]

*bump*

Didnt have much ingame sound/video lag today, if at all. Either that or Ive just gotten used to it lol.