Every now and then, I like to post when I have an "idiocracy moment" in the studio and do something stupid, so that you can learn from this and not repeat my mistake.
 
I kept hearing relatively soft, but nonetheless annoying, crackles and ticks happening at random moments. I checked the latency, the various connections, all the obvious stuff, but the sound persisted. 
 
To make a long story short, I was wearing headphones and sometimes moving my head would generate static electricity. As long as I didn't move my head, no crackles or pops...when I moved it, every now and then there would be a static buildup and a crackle. Maybe I need to investigate static sprays to see what's "headphone safe."
 
 

That's a good one. The same thing happens with guitar cables. The braided shield can get loose and they become microphonic. When you move around noise comes out of your amp. In the Winter you can get crackles off of your pickguard as you strum your electric guitar.
 
Try giving you headphones and cable a wipe with a dryer sheet. The fabric softener can really help with static build up.

ampfixer
Try giving you headphones and cable a wipe with a dryer sheet. The fabric softener can really help with static build up.

 
Now I'm REALLY glad I posted this topic!! I'll give it a try.
 

The same thing happens with guitar cables. The braided shield can get loose and they become microphonic. When you move around noise comes out of your amp.

 
You're right about the results, but I'm not sure about the reason. I did a lot of research on the Gibson Pure guitar cables before they were introduced (I'm enough of a geek to be into that kind of thing). They have a slightly conductive outer jacket which tends to dissipate static charges, and a different kind of dialectric that's hardly microphonic at all - you can turn the amp gain up to 11 and handling the cable is pretty much silent. So there are ways around the issues you mention.
 

ampfixer
...Try giving you headphones and cable a wipe with a dryer sheet. The fabric softener can really help with static build up.

Nice tip, indeed!  Now I can stop discharging the static on my kids (whichever one happened to be closest) as they were really starting to get annoyed.

ampfixer
 In the Winter you can get crackles off of your pickguard as you strum your electric guitar.
 
Try giving you headphones and cable a wipe with a dryer sheet. The fabric softener can really help with static build up.

Thanks for this tip.  I get those annoying crackles off of my pick guard all the time, to the point where I have removed the pick guard on a couple of guitars where they can easily be reattached.

JonD

ampfixer
...Try giving you headphones and cable a wipe with a dryer sheet. The fabric softener can really help with static build up.

Nice tip, indeed!  Now I can stop discharging the static on my kids (whichever one happened to be closest) as they were really starting to get annoyed.

Thanks for the alternative when running out of dryer sheets.
 

Schizophrenic subway riders have long known that this can be a problem, interfering with the reception of malevolent voices and even sometimes causing the voice of God to morph into something sounding like rap music.  Without having even a minimal understanding of electronic engineering they have evolved what is now a time honored remedy, show below, which apparently functions as a primitive Faraday cage. 
 

 
 

Anderton
 
You're right about the results, but I'm not sure about the reason. I did a lot of research on the Gibson Pure guitar cables before they were introduced (I'm enough of a geek to be into that kind of thing). They have a slightly conductive outer jacket which tends to dissipate static charges, and a different kind of dialectric that's hardly microphonic at all - you can turn the amp gain up to 11 and handling the cable is pretty much silent. So there are ways around the issues you mention.
 

 
I don't know how the gibson cables are made. You average cable from Guitar Center uses the shield as a live conductor and that's where the problem comes from. For important recording or amp testing I use an Evidence Audio guitar cable. It has a shield AND two solid copper conductors to handle the signal. No noise of any kind. Because of the way this cable is built, daily use is not practical. It doesn't lay flat and heavy use would probably fatigue the solid copper and break. I'll have to look at the Gibson cables and see how they are built.

For listening in cars, I sometimes have to hunt down rattles. Usually, I start by backing up the recording and seeing if the pop is always in the same spot. Then I realize it is coming from CDs in the compartment on the door.

I've been getting little pops and crackles in my vocal recordings lately and once in a while my ears get zapped with static electricity thru the headphones. I thought the carpet was to blame, but it turned out the office chair pad I was standing on was the culprit. I thought the pad would insulate me, but whatever kind of plastic it's made of is really good at building up static electricity.

So avoiding the chair pad helped a lot but I was still getting little crackles.  I ran a wire from the computer case to the mic stand with the idea of grounding myself before recording and that seems to work so far. I'm going to try the dryer sheets too.

This was a very timely post for me. Thanks!
 
Bjorn