More Crackling with X-Fi

I thought I had the problem licked with a driver update to my motherboard. But after a reboot, the problem returned. Interestingly enough, it's software specific. Lord of the Rings Online runs perfectly. Age of Conan exhibits some crackling. And Windows tools, like the media player, absolutely explode with the annoying distorted noise.

So, I flashed my BIOS. The most current version hearkened all the way back to 2007, which didn't bode well. Nevertheless, after I flashed it, the popping and crackling once again disappeared across the board. I rebooted to make sure and still no noise.

I'm hoping this finally fixes the problem. For those of you with a high-end system thinking about picking up a X-Fi, tread carefully. The noise problems seem to stem with high performance systems almost exclusively.