Very Distorted Audio

[konriar]

Very often, audio played in my itunes distorts horribly. It will be playing fine, then (presumably when the cpu is under more stress from other processes) it will suddenly start to distort and hiss unbearably. Sometimes if I switch songs enough times it will go away. But recently it has been more frequent, and the problem has spread to all audio, even normal computer sounds when itunes is closed. Everything distorts and it sounds awful.

I'm working on an HP Pavillion laptop with Windows XP Media Center.

I suspect this is a quicktime issue. Any ideas?