Very annoying sound problem with Aspire 6530

Music playback has suddenly become very bad on this laptop, exclusively through iTunes. Other programs don't seem affected, but seeing as iTunes is what I want to use (and need to use, seeing as i have an iPhone), this is a problem. The problem is that audio randomly 'skips' at random points during audio playback. You know when you play a CD in a stereo or something and when there's a thud the music stops for a second or two? It's like that but only for a spilt second, and it does it multiple times. Like I said, this is random.

After looking at CPU usage and all the usual crap, I uninstalled the sound drivers that came on this system. Now they've been replaced by whatever drivers Windows installed when I restarted after uninstalling the original drivers, and the sound works fine. However, there is a draw back. The built in microphone doesn't work: people on my Ventrilo server say it just sounds like a stupidly loud hissing sound; it isn't picking up any other sound at all. The microphone worked perfectly when the original drivers were installed. So at the moment I have two choices: have perfect music playback and no microphone, or have crappy, stuttery music playback and have a working microphone.

Any one know what's going on? I tryed restoring the system to factory settings, hoping it'd fix it, but nope, it's still there.

Thanks in advance.