[Help] GA-EX58-UD4P onboard sound - Clicking and poping noise on stereo audio!

[totalz]

Onboard sound, only digital output (SPDIF) is used!!

No problem if going through WASAPI; AC3 and DTS are fine too.

But if I play stereo audio (fixed at 16bit) through directsound or waveout, random noises are poping out from time to time.  Very annoying, because this also cause problem on all flash audio!  This is not a browser or flash plugin problem, tested with several media players too.

Tried both drivers from Gigabyte or the latest from Realtek, no help! 

[Lsdmeasap]

Are you using the latest BIOS?  If not please update to the latest BIOS and see if that helps, be sure to load optimized defaults after you flash then save/apply, then reboot back to BIOS and set your SATA settings and anything else you need before proceeding to windows.

Latest BIOS is here
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=2986#bios

I'd go ahead and use F14p

[totalz]

Yes, latest bios already.

[Lsdmeasap]

Hmm, have you tested a clean install, with no drivers or programs installed?   Sometimes drivers or programs can cause this.

Also, if you have easytune or DES Energy installed, disable them from startup or temporarily uninstall them to rule them out.

[Lycan]

Same issue here - only it does it with the onboard audio, add-in card (creative X-Fi Fatal1ty , usb plug-in audio (Plantronics Gamecom 7.1) and USB Bluetooth (3 different vendors tried).

Seems that anytime audio is used it causes blips, klicks, pops and crackles in the audio-streams.

Multiple re-installs, multiple hardware changes, 14p bios is in place, 32bit and 64bit OSes tried (Windows XP 32 and 64, Windows 7 32 and 64) every driver imaginable.

Is this normal for this model?  Buggy firmware?  Tempted to update to a newer chipset, but really don't want to spend more money on an otherwise perfectly functioning system.