One of the computers in my house is suddenly having issues playing music.

It crackles and 'skips' or pauses randomly andjust generally ruins the whole experience. It didn't use to do that- just started in the past couple of months.

I thought it was just when we played music from a separate computer over the wireless connection, but it happens even with CD's or locally stored MP3's.

I thought it was the speakers, but it happened with other speakers.

I thought it was a short in the onboard sound, but it happened with a new sound card.

I thought it was memory, but I doubled the RAM from 512Mb to 1Gb and it happened with the increased RAM. Plus I have other computers with less RAM and 512Mb is plenty to play music as far as I can tell.

I thought it was interference or issues with the new wireless-N adapter, but I tried 4 other wireless network adapters and the problem still exists.

I have looked at task manager and I do not see any specific process using too much CPU or memory. Looking at the performance tab it does not appear that the memory or CPU are maxed out, or even overly taxed.

Any sound / hardware experts have any other clues for me?