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When playing back .MKVs from Bluray rips, certain sounds are distorted, almost crackly, especially those during loud action scenes with a significant amount of bass. This is especially apparent during explosions. I've tried playing back through multiple sound systems, playback on both OSX and Win 7, converting the audio into every format I can think of, and playing back in multiple programs, and it's still distorted. When playing the original Bluray the sound is fine.

Movies purchased from iTunes (different formats, I know) don't seem to have this issue even for the same film.

Notable Examples: The Avengers (explosion at 1:42:00), Serenity (explosion at 1:45:45), Iron Man (explosion at 1:21:39)

Suggestions?

If it's happening under different operating systems then it sounds like your speakers are clipping when the volume gets too loud. How are you getting the audio out from your PC?

My primary setup is going out through from my laptop's 3.5mm jack to an old but powerful 2.1 setup. I've also tried my laptop's built-in speakers, a pair of Monster Turbine Pro Coppers, and AirPlay to my home theater system.

Because the sound card is built in, I haven't been able to find very much information about it specifically.

Interestingly torrents of the same movie have the same problem. The only format that doesn't seem to have this problem is iTunes and Amazon purchased movies, as well as the occasional youtube clip of the scene.

Your system is clearly having issues with DTS audio. I'm not an expert on amp setups, put sending 7.1 down a 3.5mm is never going to end up awesome, especially with a built in sound card doing the heavy lifting for the DAC conversion.

I'm not sure what you're using to covert your audio to different formats, but it won't resolve the clipping issues if the variations in volume are too high for the various parts of your system to handle.

As for other providers not having the issue, they're not using proper DTS audio.

Airplay doesn't have native support for DTS because it's Apple hardware and honestly i don't give it the time of day, presumably there's a weird conversion going on there too thats screwing it up.

In short, a new soundcard and amp that supports HDMI will solve your issues.