In the past we found that UI doing too much alpha blending using GDI calls would result in crackle.
This is because GDI moved to Kernel around Win2K and Kernel servicing takes priority over the highest possible priority audio threads. Having MMCSS on can help some, but in general anything that results in too much Kernel CPU usage will preempt user mode threads. Raising the latency a notch should work around that.
Keith