Buzzing/stuttering audio

Recently I have been having some problems with music buzzing and skipping. I primarily use iTunes but it happens with Windows Media Player, to a lesser degree. Sometimes the mouse will stutter a bit when it happens. The CPU usage is usually about 3-12% and the temperature around 35-38 C.

Specs:
Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
i5 2500k Sandy Bridge with stock heatsink
8 GB of DDR3 PC3 10666
600 Watt PSU
ST3250312AS (boot drive)
ST31000524AS (expansion drive)

Things to note:
-The music is located on the expansion drive. I tried playing a song from the boot drive and it still does it.
-The expansion drive is pretty loud. It always makes sort of a grinding noise when it starts up.
-I just recently upgraded from 4 GB of RAM to 8.
-I ran Windows Memory Diagnostics and found no errors.
-I ran a scan with Malwarebytes and found nothing.

IRC conflict? Did you install anything new recently? Is the expansion drive new?

I've had the expansion drive for a few months. The only thing new is the RAM.

Try foobar. Wmp and itunes are bloatware.

Does this happen when playing games also? I had a similar problem back when F.E.A.R. first came out, and it ended up being related to a problem with Direct X. Perhaps try downloading/installing the latest version.

have you tried anyother media players?

also would to eliminate software issues, if you have a linux cd or a windows USB/Live version just do a boot to it and see if it is still there.

sometimes messing with codecs and certain drivers can be a hassle and complicated.
doing the boot to a different o/s will make clear if it is a software or hardware issue.

gl!

I haven't been having the issue for while now, but I noticed that I have a bunch of event viewer errors with event id 7, so I ran a test with SeaTools and the boot drive is failing the Short Drive Self Test.

Issue is still occurring. I am on a clean install of Windows now with a SSD. It does not occur exclusively with iTunes. The most important thing to note is that the cursor is stopping when the audio skips.

I may give Linux a shot, although that may be difficult because I use Windows because of games and certain programs specifically to Windows, and the issue does not occur often. Maybe a few times a week.

Run a couple passes of Goldmemory. It seems to be able to find ram problems that memtest and others can't. I just went through hell with my new build because I didn't know this. Try it out. Seems that the only thing different is your ram upgrade.

http://www.goldmemory.cz/

Does it happen only with audio or with everything? Sounds like SSD stuttering to me. Is SATA mode on AHCI?

Doesn't seem to happen in Linux. It started happening almost immediately when I switched back to Windows. It's like switching between windows is putting a load on the CPU and causing it to happen, but when I check the CPU usage and RAM usage, it's usually pretty low.

Knufire said:

Does it happen only with audio or with everything? Sounds like SSD stuttering to me. Is SATA mode on AHCI?

Click to expand...

Happens with everything. It was before the SSD.

EDIT: I'm getting huge CPU spikes when it happens. Is there any way to find out which process is doing it?