've found the issue! It was related to one of the RealTek HD Audio drivers. I installed it and so far no hiccups! I guess the sound looping was caused by some issue with the driver... I thought it was my GPU or RAM, but neither showed any issues during stress tests. Perhaps you should look into your on-board audio drivers as well! Fortunately for me, I use audio through a usb amp that leads into my studio monitors... so I wouldn't say it is the USB driven audio, but definitely something regarding audio. I'm going to continue playing games and see if the issue comes up again. I've also noticed a more instantaneous switch when I'm Alt+tabbing so thats cool too! :D