Intermittent quality problems

[frustrated-me]

PLEASE HELP! I am losing my mind.

I did online customer service with MJ on this issue. After an hour of IMing and changing numerous settings, it hasn't changed anything.

I don't ever hear the problem on my end, but the people I talk with complain about it. Every once in a while, they say that I sound all muffled. It lasts for maybe 5 seconds or so. And can happen a few times per call, especially on longer calls.

After trying a million things to fix the problem (different phones, headsets, ports, etc...) I am starting to wonder if it is a background program runs for a few seconds and sucks up memory.

While on a call, I've had the task manager open (sorting the list by memory usage) to see if there is anything sucking up memory when the issue happens. A few times, when the problem occurs, svchost.exe seems to climb towards the top of the programs using a lot of memory - but that doesn't really tell me much.

Has anyone else had this issue? Any ideas on what could be the problem?

I'm really at my wit's end with this.