Debut video capture audio crackle

First of all I'm not sure if this is the right sub forum or not for this question and if its incorrect I apologize.

I have been using Debut video capture (version 1.62) along with a Star Tech USB capture card and Audacity to record gameplay footage for over a yera now with minimal trouble, until yesterday.

Yesterday almost at random, Debut began having audio crackles while Audacity was running, I stopped audacity and it seemed to fix the problem, but I noticed the audio crackle would return any time the OS drive did anything, so any process in the background which has never affected it before now even the most minimal CPU usage causes crackle. I tried changing various settings within Debut to see if that had any affect (audio sample rate, recorded file format, etc.) as well as installing a newer version of Debut to see if there was a fix (which there wasn't)

I tried uninstalling and re-installing all the core programs, drivers and any other related components with no success, I have even gone so far as to reformat and reinstall windows starting from the ground up. I am really at a loss as to what caused this issue and that I cant seem to get it to work properly again.

My system set up is.
Debut video capture 1.62
Audacity 2.0.2
Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit (SP 1)
Intel core 13-2100 @3.10 GHz
Gigabyte z68ap-d3 motherboard
8GB RAM
80GB primary HD for OS
300GB storage HD where all video/audio is recorded to
Star Tech usb capture card

Any suggestions as to what I can do to fix it? I mean I had recorded hundreds of videos without too much problem before, but now with the crackling its just such terrible quality that I cant stand it, and I would hate to have all the time, money and effort wasted on all of this so I'm really begging for help