Audio clipping awful

[natman]

I have my Kubuntu 20.04, whenever I listen to a video on youtube, or play a local music file the audio is fine, then clips/cuts this happens seemingly at random but like every 10-20sec. If I look at the volume metre I see it spike or rapidly flick up/down during the clip in the audio, as if it maxs to 100% for a split second. It makes listening to anything annoying and unusuable. Have also noticed on conference calls, every so often someones voice freezes and repeats and then back to normal.

Any help ?

[Red Squirrel]

Does this happen if you are browsing the internet at same time?

I have the same issue where the audio sort of skips or gets very loud for a split second, or something, it's like this really violent spike. Hard to explain. I have a bunch of other issues including this and will be doing a clean install so I hope it will go away.