Intermittent Distortion and Dropouts

[solidterry]

Thanks for creating such a great sounding music player that I've enjoyed for many years.  Lately I’ve been having issues with intermittent distortion and dropouts that weren’t happening when I used AIMP with my old discarded desktop computer with Windows 7.  Ever since I added AIMP to my new Lenovo laptop (Windows 10) and also added it to a custom-built desktop computer (Windows 8.1), I get distortion every few minutes on the Windows 10 laptop and audio dropouts on the Windows 8.1 desktop. 

One thing I noticed with the Windows 8.1 desktop is when the audio drops out for (usually) 2-3 seconds and then comes back in, the music picks up where it left off.  So, I don’t really miss any music – the music simply gets delayed for 2-3 seconds in the middle of a song the same way that it would if I were to turn off a running tape machine for 2-3 seconds and then turn it back on.  On the other computer (laptop with Windows 10) I get occasional distortion for 2-3 seconds while the song plays, but the music doesn’t drop out like it does on the other computer.

It seems like perhaps something is running in the background on both computers that I haven’t been able to detect, but I’m not sure.  Again, I didn’t have these problems with my old desktop that was running Windows 7.  But I don’t know if the OS has anything to do with any of this. 

Maybe examining the Task Managers would give me a clue, but I’m not technically savvy enough to know exactly what to analyze there.  Can you or anyone else offer any suggestions about what to look for?  These problems are spoiling my enjoyment of this wonderful music player.

I’ve checked my connections and replaced cables but the problem persists.  I tried turning off updates.  I removed my DAC from the signal chain.  I’ve tried different speaker types.  I avoided using the internet while listening to the player.  None of these efforts solved the problem.  I’m using the latest version of AIMP on both computers.