About a week after we ran an update on the Alienware M17x stuttering audio problem, Dell's community manager John B. has written in to let us know that the company has posted a fix. It entails ...

Never install the manufacturer's audio drivers. The Microsoft automatic ones are more than adequate. Try removing the Dell drivers, reboot, and you'll probably find everything will work.

By taking the plug out and putting it back in solved the problem. All sound settings in windows 8.1 were set to default, as were all the settings in the dell audio program that was factory installed.