Y50 audio crackling/popping

Hello, I've been searching the internet for a few weeks for a solution to this but it's driving me nuts so I finally decided to make a new thread for it here. I've started getting random audio cracking and popping noises in music and videos on certain frequencies and I really don't know exactly when it started (it's been around a month).

It's not a hardware issue since I booted Ubuntu and audio sounds perfectly crisp with no crackling so it must be a Windows or driver issue. I re-installed Windows 8.1 but the issue still persisted even after installing the drivers one by one. I disabled/updated the network adapters, graphic cards, installed new realtek audio drivers/reverted back to the old realtek audio drivers, etc. but none of it has worked. Issue persists with any headphone/earphone I tried.

I hope someone could help me with this, it's driving me insane.

 

Are you using a driver from Windows, Realtek or Lenovo? Did you by any chance update your driver using Windows Update(I'm asking because my Y50 has a pending update for audio driver in Windows Update..)?
You must use only the driver provided by Lenovo and do not let Windows update it either.

 

I'm using the default driver by Lenovo (6.0.1.7195) now, but I did update it before to a generic updated Realtek driver try to fix the problem when it occurred on the driver provided by Lenovo as well, reverted back when it didn't help. It happens on the default Windows audio drivers without any Realtek drivers installed as well.

 

I "fixed" this problem, for reference to anyone who might have this issue in the future: Install older Realtek R2.71 drivers. I don't know how uninstalling the drivers as a whole and using the generic Microsoft audio drivers still had crackling issues but using an old Realtek audio driver fixes the problem. Makes no sense.