[mothered]

with every audio task

Do you have a Restore point available at the time of when It was functioning correctly?

If so, hit a System Restore back to that time & date.

last restore point was from after it started happening

On the grounds It's not a hardware Issue, perform a clean Installation of Windows and be done with It.

The amount of time It takes to troubleshoot the Issue (to no avail), Is not worth It. If you're organized, you'd be up and running In around 90 minutes with a clean Install- and that's on a bad day.