Annoying pops and clicks in audio.

[fistfulofmetal]

What would cause annoying pops and clicks in my audio?
I've heard it in two situations:

When I listen to an mp3 podcast using Firefox as the player.
When playing games.

When playing games it doesnt happen at first but starts after playing for awhile.

edit: ok now I'm hearing it when listening to music in WMP.

[Brehvolution]

Downloading a shitty rip will have them. I doubt it's your own hardware.

[fistfulofmetal]

um. it's in various things across different mediums.

i heard it during the newest 1upY and thought it was just poor production but nobody was saying anything about it.

then i started hearing it when playing Crysis. Got so bad I had to turn the game off.

I just heard it a few minutes ago when playing Max Payne 2, and when i exited out of the game and played an mp3 i've had for over a year (so I know it's not the mp3) I heard it.

[MCD]

it could be your speakers (try to lower the volume level on them and see if it's gone) or the sound driver, update it if a new version exist.

also make sure there isn't a program causing this like a vista gadget or some ads on websites.

[fistfulofmetal]

I did think it might be my headphones. They are fairly old, but the thing that made me think otherwise was that the sounds weren't instant. They started after a awhile. When it happend with 1up yours i was listening with Firefox open, which is sucks a lot of resources. It happened with Crysis and MP2 which also probably suck a lot of resources.

Right now i'm listening to music at a pretty high volume and I don't hear it.

One thing I just did was go in and swap the plug for my front speaker port from the one labeled "HD Audio" to the AC' 97 one. Could that have been then problem?

[MCD]

if it doesn't come back then that's it.

[fistfulofmetal]

nope, just started happening again.
i closed WMP out and opened another song and it's not there anymore.

Like always it starts after a period of time :\