Snap, crackle and pop sound - Acer Aspire 5738ZG

Hi,
I've had my laptop for about a month, and it's been working perfectly up until about a week ago. The sound is completely messed up - like the title indicates. It sounds like the speakers are busted, but they're not since I got the same problem with headphones plugged in. I got the latest Realtek HD drivers and I don't have an NVIDIA graphics card (since someone mentioned the NVIDIA drivers could mess with Realtek). I tried system restore to no avail. I recently had the laptop plugged into an HDTV with an HDMI cable, could this have caused the problem?

Also worth mentioning: when I play music, the sound is always worst the few couple of songs and then it almost goes away. But when I watch video the sound is constantly there but not as severe. I'm lost...

Any ideas? Should I return it? That would suck, I hate returning stuff I spent so much time personializing

Edit: forgot to mention that sound also is choppy, sometimes makes my music freeze for a second

 

Uninstall those Realtek drivers and nVidia drivers you're using and re-install those from Acer support site. Returning the notebooks doesn't make sense as it's most likely a software issue so Acer would say it's your fault (and technically they would be right). If you send it back to them for a warranty repair the first thing they do it to use D2D recovery and if it solves the problem- send it back to you. You may as well do it yourself if reinstalling default drivers and possibly cleaning the OS from their remains won't help.

 

Just for the heck of it, try this:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ace...definition-audio-high-pitch-noise-solved.html

I noticed a few crackles and pops from my speakers until I did this. I believe that the setting for "Play to digital output" will turn off the headphones, but just give it a shot before you go through a mountain of driver re-installs.

 

Thanks guys, I think I solved it. New drivers aren't always the best apparently, so I uninstalled the Realtek drivers and went with the ones from Acer's site. Seems to be working fine now, although i do get the occasional crackle. Guess it could be the music/video I'm playing also, some of my old mp3's are kinda lossy...

Once again, thank you for helping a frustrated music lover