Last week, I purchased a Dell Precision 5510 with Windows 7 and the audio was working fine, but on Saturday night I was watching a video on Netflix when the right-side speaker started to crackle. I followed the instructions on a number of tutorials including reinstalling the RealTek audio drivers and switching to the windows default drivers, but none of these things have gotten rid of the crackling.
Of note, the crackling only starts when the audio is raised somewhere around the 50% capacity mark or beyond, but it is a constant and persistent annoyance at that point. I am of the belief that this is a hardware issue at this point, but any insight others could provide before I contact Dell Support would be appreciated.