Hiya....we have had an issue reported for the M17 that may be what you are experiencing: stuttering sound, during gameplay or music playback. After following some normal troubleshooting steps like reinstalling sound drivers or hooking up headphones, the problem continued.
We were troubleshooting this problem with a couple of customers and we realized that the following steps will get rid of the problem:
1- Uninstall video card driver
2- Uninstall sound card driver
3- Reinstall sound card driver
4- Reinstall video card driver
If none of these resolutions work for your M17, please contact our support team for additional assistance. If you prefer you can contact our support team via our Alienware Forums from our main page via My Hive at-http://support.alienware.com/Profile/Login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fSupport_Pages%2fRestricted_Pages%2fmyhive.aspx
You may also contact our support team at 1-866-287-6727 (US) or online for EMEA at
http://support.alienware.co.uk/Support_Pages/contact_support.aspx
If you are unable to log into My Hive USA, please PM me and I will help you with your username and log in information or registering.