Tips to troubleshoot clicking sound from speakers?

[wrybread]

I have a new-to-me W530, and I'm getting an odd clicking/popping sound from the speakers when playing audio. I can even hear it in this test tone before the audio is audible:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URrEtyFSENc

In other words even when it's playing tones in the 70 hertz range, which is below the speakers' range, I'm hearing the clicking sounds. The clicking is in VLC, Windows Media Player, Youtube via Chrome, I think every sound source.

I get the clicking with wired headphones too.

Windows 10 with all updates, and I downloaded and installed the driver from lenovo.com. Windows Device Manger says the device is called "Speaker/HP (Realtek High Definition Audio)", and the driver version is 6.0.1.7572 (dated 7/29/2015). It had the same issue with the driver from Windows Update, though I didn't write the version of that driver down.

I uninstalled Dolby, and it's a pretty clean install, no other audio utilities that I can find.

I tried a suggestion I found on google of going into Bios and changing the graphics mode to "Integrated Graphics", "Discrete Graphics" and "Nvidia Optimus". I get the issue with all 3 options.

Does anyone have any ideas for troubleshooting this? It's driving me a bit crazy.

[wrybread]

Ugh, I get the clicking in Linux Mint too... So I guess it's hardware? Any clues about what could be the cause?