I listed a post on this same problem the other day. I have the RAID version of your board, with the SBLive. This crackling has been frustrating me for about a week. I actually called ABIT to see what they suggested. Eventually, I got my crackling to diminish greatly, although I still have it once and a while (only about 1 crack every 15-20 minutes).
Here is what I did:
1) Download this latency fix and put it in your "StartUp" folder under the start menu (the readme explains) - This is a SB Latency fix, I don't think it matters if you have a Geforce video card or not:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/mvp3_latency12.zip
2) ABIT suggested that I enable the Memory Hole in the BIOS. This is under the advanced chipset features. This really didn't make a difference on my system.
3) Download the latest and greatest video and sound drivers. Depending on your video card, it might be an issue between the 2 cards.
4) I see that you installed the VIA 4 in 1 drivers. Did you do a full install of these drivers? One problem here is the UDMA option. If you installed UDMA, uninstall the drivers and try it again. To uninstall this option is sort of involved, and instructions to do it correcly are on VIA's website at
http://www.via.com.tw/support/faq.htm, and look at the IDE Busmaster section.
5) And finally (you might not like this one), I bought an SB Live XGamer rather than the value (after testing my friends XGamer on my system and noticing that the crackling was considerably less). I don't really understand why this works, unless the revision of the card was different and something changed on the card. I have been led to believe that these cards are exactly the same. Well in my case, that wasn't true.
Hope this helps. I will continue to look for solutions, so I'll let you know if I find any.
PS - What video card are u using?
Bob