I hear sound clicks/pops on my Dell Inspiron 5558 on Windows 8.1 64 bit. I saw people advised to turn off power management in Dell Audio program. However, I don't have Advanced tab there, so there is no chance to disable it.
It seems that mostly these clicks appear when soundcard goes to sleep and wakes up.
I also tried to adjust realtek power management settings in registry, but it works only for headphones. With internal speakers this problem still persists.
I've tried to uninstall realtek drivers and keep windows driver. But it doesn't help. This problem occurs using laptop speakers and headphones. The clicks appear when starting playing sound and right after the sound stopped playing. My BIOS (A07) and chipset drivers are up to date.
This laptop came with Ubuntu 14.04 preinstalled. I can hear these clicks on Ubuntu too. However these clicks appear when adjusting volume level smoothly by dragging volume level control in status bar.