Sound issues with new T410i

[firemind]

Dear Thinkpads,
My one-month old T410i (NVIDIA GPU, Win7 32bit, 4 GB RAM) looks lovely yet sounds pretty bad. When watching compressed movies, DVDs or even Itunes MP3s (good encoding), there are intermittent pops and crackles from internal speakers or headphones when those are used. Not loud pops, just enough to drive a perfectionist absolutely round the bend.
It happens when connected to the mains, as well as when on battery (I use the 6cell+the bottom 9cell - awesome battery life and more comfortable writing angle).
Possibly related is that in device manager there is the Conexant sound card (latest drivers, reinstalled once) but also four NVIDIA high definition audio entries under sound.
Any ideas?
I'm thinking of running the computer from a Linux live CD to see if it's hardware issues?
Many thanks,
Niklas

[firemind]

Good news - I reinstalled the driver, and now there are no pops. Consider the matter closed until I mention otherwise.