Sniper M5 Z87 tinny audio issue

[Lukanite]

Occasionally, the sound card in my G1.Sniper M5 seems to "crash" - although it continues to provide sound, the audio itself becomes incredibly tinny and distorted. The volume also seems to be hard set to 100% (which is painfully loud, by the way), and Windows's volume control has no effect on the volume (although setting volume to 0 or mute does work). It seems to happen mostly during gameplay or shortly after, but I'm not sure I could conclusively link the two together.

Here's a sample of how it sounds (linked due to size constraints):
https://lucario.info/archive/g1sm5sound.mp3

Disabling and re-enabling the Sound Blaster Recon3Di speakers does not fix the issue, but a restart does. I've had this issue on Windows 8.1, but now that I've seen it in 10, I'm starting to suspect it's an issue with the MB itself.

Does anyone have any insight into or know how to fix this issue?

Thanks!

P.S. The front panel mic also doesn't work on my PC, but I'm not sure if that's a board issue or I somehow messed up the installation...

[dmdilks]

The thing is that windows 8.1 & 10 are the same OS with a face make over. Just asking did you ever run windows 7? If you did was it that way too?

What I would try uninstall all the audio drivers. See if windows install them just to see what happens.

[Lukanite]

I ran Windows 7 for a short while a long time ago on this PC, but I can't remember if I had that issue back then - I also wasn't running intensive applications like Battlefield 4 back then, either, which might be a contributing factor to this issue.

I went ahead and uninstalled the audio drivers, at which point my speakers were no longer recognized and it switched over to HDMI audio. Windows doesn't seem to be able to find the drivers on its own, so I reinstalled the official 6.0.101.1040 Creative driver from Gigabyte's website.

Also, if it's useful, I did an absolutely clean install of Windows 10 - hard disk wipe, then install from ISO

Thanks again for the help!