Most irritating issue as of now?

[JohnH]

Revising the Windows power management setting to "high performance" can help with stuttering etc.

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried making the change but it made no difference. I also tried increasing the Air buffer size to 2000ms and that also made no difference to the incidence of the popping noises. However, this is not really a problem for me as I don't need to use Air. Trying it out was more of a technical exercise out of interest.