I have an HP Envy dv7-7398ca notebook with Windows8, owned it for about 2 weeks. From the first day, I've been getting intermittent hissing/crackling noise in my Logitek USB headphones which work fine on any other PC. By intermittent, I mean that it tends to go to varying degrees for about 30 seconds, then stop for 5-10 seconds, then start up again. The timing and intensity is almost like listening to the clicking of a hard drive from like 15 years ago. I've gone into the Beats audio program and disabled all the extra features and turned down the equalizer settings as gar as they will with no impact at all. The only thing that gets it to stop is to completely turn the master volume all the way to zero, which obviously is not a real solution.
I've found several similar posts, with suggestions to unplug the battery and power and hold the power button for 15 seconds, as well as uninstall all audio devices in device manager, do a Scan for New Hardware, and then reboot. I've done both of those with no success. I've also updated all drivers.
I've also read to change the Acceleration mode from "Maximized" to "Enhanced" in the Intel Rapid Storage Technology program. While I have a hybrid drive and this application, it (at least in the current version on my system) does not give any ability to configure it.
The only other possible solution I've seen so far (which I have not tried) is to completely uninstall the Beats audio software and leave it off, which I'd rather avoid.
Anyone have any ideas what else to do?