Sound randomly garbled or "underwater"

Today I updated all the drivers for all my cards, parts, etc., and found that after doing so all sounds coming from my computer, be it through headphones or the built-in speakers, from system sounds to game sounds to music will be garbled. They range from the occasional tiny hiccup to getting about a second of "interruption" for every second of sound. I tried to re-update or un-update my sound card drivers, however I cannot seem to find what kind of sound card I have. My computer is an Alienware14x laptop with all the regular components.

It's driving me crazy and if anyone could offer any suggestions as to how I could possibly look into fixing it that would be great! Thanks!
Will

I'm running the diagnostic at the Alienware support website now to see what it turns up. Also, how would it be possible to check if there are any special effects going on? I doubt this is the problem because of how random the sound is, however I'd still like to look into it.

Also, I've begin to develop a new theory: I believe these "shudders" in my sound are actually indicative of my whole computer kind of "shuddering" or "stopping" for a split second. Would there be any way for me to test for this or how would I go about working on it?

I tried that, and it did not seem to help anything :/ Anything else I can try? Or is it possible to change around the IRQ settings to make this not happen?

In my control panel I do not have a Hardware and Sound option. The only thing I have is a Sound option, which simply lists my input and output devices, and allows me to change the default Windows sounds. There are no options for the output devices other than mono or stereo. I'm beginning to think I do not even have Realtek on my computer because I cannot find anything for it anywhere.

Ok I'm running the SFC /scannow currently. Theoretically, what would happen if it identifies an error? And last night I downloaded a bunch of updates from the dell website you posted, I looked and one them was an installer for Realtek audio. However after successfully running the installation and restarting my computer, the problem is still the same as ever.