Clicking coming from speakers.

[Moonpie2]

Hi all.

I got an odd one and I can't figure it out :/
Hope someone here has some insight.

So, I have a normal ole PC, some 2.1 speakers plugged into the audio jack on the rear IO panel.

Recently I noticed the speakers 'clicking'. It never used to do this a month or so ago.
A click every 4 or 5 seconds. And weirdly, after I've turned one of my crypto-miners on for a few minutes and am stressing the system, it's clicking so frequently, it starts to sound like static or a gigercounter going crazy.

More oddness. The clicking only happens when I have something open on my PC that makes sound.
WMP or YouTube for example. Even if they're not playing, just having these things open makes the clicking occur.

I tried using the front audio port on my PC, clicking also happens.
I tried a different speaker plugged into the audio ports, clicking also happens.
I tried playing my PC audio through a bluetooth speaker... NO clicking.

I've googled this and found no definitive answer, but I see 'grounding' mentioned a lot.

So yeah... odd and annoying.
Any advicde?

 

[Moonpie2]

No?

It's ok, I think I fixed it.

Went into the sound settings, advanced properties of the speakers/headphone jack and just started checking and unchecking boxes and applying the new settings and stuff.
Nothing worked UNTIL, I changed the audio quality down from studio quality to DVD quality and then back up to studio :/
Why the hell that fixed the clicking, I don't know, but here we are... clicking gone !!

Yay I guess

 

[Moonpie2]

Possible a Windows 10 update did something with the onboard audio.

I also started to suspect this, but still had no idea of the fix.
Just another if Win10's quirks I guess :/