Random crackling noises on Windows PC

I have a Windows PC with an i5 processor. I don't know the other specs as I'm writing this. Starting just today, I've been hearing crackling and slowdown when playing my scores. It seems to happen randomly and varies in intensity. Sometimes its very small and sometimes it really slows down playback. I've had stutters before because I needed to update my firmware and my disk was being overworked, but that seemed to be solved after I updated my drivers, and this seems different. I've opened the Task Manager on Windows and the most memory I've been using is about 75%. My CPU usage is about 15% and my jumps anywhere between 2 and 25%. This is normal for me and I haven't had this noise before. I was thinking it could be my headphones, but it doesn't change when I turn the jack in the port. I know this has been an issue on Mac, but does anyone know about it happening on Windows?