Hi,
I have a Lenovo ThinkCentre with Linux Mint that I use to play music. Sometimes, when there’s supposed to be silence (because YouTube paused the video or something), this weird popping noise appears. It disappears whenever there’s music playing and even when I open the sound settings, but re-appears whenever there’s silence. The device is connected via aux cable to an amplifier. This happens on two separate devices.
I don’t know if it’s a Lenovo issue or a linux issue, but it’s quite annoying.
I can’t help much with it, but just in case, temporarily replace all the external sound kit. Test with headphones if needs be, but don’t do what lots of people do and forget to replace the cable :)
It sounds like it’s probably coming from the computer, but I’ve driven myself crazy in the past by forgetting about cables.