EotN In game music crackling.

Hi Guys. Iv recently developed a problem with my music in GW. Iv never had this difficulty before, and i have been playing for over a year. It seems that after a couple of minutes play, the music starts to crack and pop consistently, like a badly ripped mp3. It mostly happens on the louder more forcefull sections of the tracks, and less noticeable when it quietens. I got EotN about a month ago and had never had a problem with any other episodes music. As far as i can tell its only in EotN tracks, although i think i need to go back and check other episodes closer to make sure. I am running realtek onboard sound, which has always given me terrible electrical noise from my system but i was aware of this and want to diagnose this new problem as i am buying a new card soon. I dont seem to have this problem in any other applications or media programs, only GW in game music. Also, sound effects seem to be fine. I have noticed in other threads people mentioned defragging GW.dat file. Could this be an option? Possibly a total reinstall if my sound files have been corrupted?

Thanks in advance.

Check for sound driver updates.

Also, if you're using speakers you can discharge your sound card by unplugging your entire computer for 15 minutes. Just press the power button once or twice after unplugging.

Been there, know exactly what you are talking about. I ened up getting a Sound Blaxter X-FI XtreamGamer and had to use old drivers to fix the issue.
Anyway, what sound card are you using now?

I got exactly this issue after updating my audio and video drivers. (Soundcard: Creative Labs Soundblaster X-FI Extreme Music PCI) but it is not limited to GW:EN.

The crackling mostly occurs when there is any disk activity. I may be able to temporarily fix it by setting the processor affinity of gw.exe to all four of my processor cores, instead of only one.

I used to get this problem in prophecies. Is your sound slider set to highest quality? If so set it to fastest, that sorted it for me.