Audio stutters, crackles, and slows down...

[HoneyMustard]

My Yosemite install is working great except for one thing. I am having constant issues with sound. After about an hour of playing any audio it starts to stutter, crackle, and sound like it's slowing down.

I am using an AudioQuest Dragonfly USB DAC which worked perfectly under Mavericks. I also have a cheap C-Media USB audio device and if I switch to that the audio will be OK for a minute or so but then will go right back to sounding terrible. I am not using the onboard audio at all.

Audio in Safari sounds terrible all the time. Audio playing from YouTube in Chrome will start sounding strange at random intervals and the only way I can fix it is by rebooting the computer. I have a USB 3.0 addon card (can't remember which one other than it was recommended here) and I have tried plugging the audio devices into both the native USB ports and the addon card and I have found no difference.

This issue is driving my nuts. I'm using USB because it is supposed to just work and be universal. What gives? Does anyone have any ideas?

Specs:

Asus P7P55D-PRO
Core i7 860
8GB RAM
Radeon 5870

 

[HoneyMustard]

No one has any ideas? I have been trying to figure this out for coming on three weeks now. I cannot play Youtube videos at all in Safari as the sound is just awful. I did discover that videos from other sites will play.

The problem is not consistent. Sometimes it is system wide, other times it seems to be application specific. I have changed the sampling rate in the Audio MIDI settings and tried all of the options to no avail.