For the last several hours (don't know exaclty how many) I have been plagued by an irritating "magic crackling" sound, emenating from my character. The pitch changes slightly when changing to 3rd person view. I have found that when I turn down the sound effects to minimum, this magical sound disappears. Occasionally fast travelling removes the sound temporarily, only for it to eventually return again. I have tried dropping everything in my inventory (except for quest items), and the sound still persists. It doesn't seem to matter whether I have any spells actively selected or not, the sound still persists. If it was a low volume sound effect I could more easily just live with it, but the volume is such that ignoring isn't an option.

I don't think this is in any way related to the earlier Skyrim issues of needing to set the windows sound to 44khz only, although I have yet to try changing that to see if anything changes. It really seems like a persistant game sound that refuses to go away. I would gladly welcome any insights to this as it's really ruining my enjoyment of the game, as it actually seems to be getting louder over time.

No Lightning Cloak active? Or perhaps a follower with that or a similar spell active? Could you list the Active Effects for your character?

From searching around it seems that others have encountered a similar issue, fixes include things like switching to werewolf mode, and forcing sixchange through the console. It seems that it may in someway be related to the chillrend sword, which I started using awhile ago, likely when the sound starting playing. It appears that the frozen crackle sound effect that comes from the chillrend sword can become bugged, and not go away even when the sword is sheathed or removed. I haven't been able to find any kind of permanent fix for this yet.

Hi! Well, on my own experience, crackling was caused by frost spell (done by Illia, my personal friendly witch!). And, as noted in your message, sometime it isn't there and, after a fight (one she uses magic in) it comes back... I was annoyed very much by this also...

But, the modder that I am came up with a solution!
I just silenced the wav file (using an audio editor (aka goldwave)

What I did was to extract the wav from the bsa file and silence them using goldwave...
data\sound\fx\mag\icicle\mag_icicles_ready_lp.wav
data\sound\fx\mag\frostbite\mag_frostbite_drawsheathe_lpm.wav
data\sound\fx\mag\frostbite\wallnode\mag_frost_wallnode_01_lp.wav
data\sound\fx\mag\frostbite\wallnode\mag_frost_wallnode_02_lp.wav

I do not know exactly if it's all, or only one or the other... But, it's silent now so I do not care much!

If you are unable/don't know how to do it, just give me a whack and I'll zip it up and try to find somewhere to upload it (or simply send me a personal message with your email!)

I just have to give a shoutout to my man Vortaka, he engineered a permanent solution to this vexxing glitch. Sure I might not be able to hear frost magic sounds anymore, but that beats the daylights out of having to hear them looped one over another 8 times permanently!