My computer keeps making a crackling sound whenever audio is played.

I really need some help to resolve this issue. I'll try to describe my issue as best as I can.

Background
A few days ago my computer started to produce a crackling sound when playing any audio

Symptoms
The crackling sound is present online and when playing local files
The crackling sound is present in both stereo and headphones

Cause
I'm not sure, I use a virtual machine to browse the internet and I haven't downloaded anything when it started to happen. I think my computer had a windows update before it happened.

Solutions failed
I used my asus audio troubleshooting application and it said all drivers were present and up to date

System details
Asus X54C notebook Win7

If you need any other information please ask, I'm not good with troubleshooting computer problems and would really appreciate some help