bboy7895 Great Job!
I think the culprit here is a k-lite codec pack (in particular, the LAVFilters included in the pack) they are doing their messy mess in the background without us knowing. Told you, I have a horrible experience with them!
I don't think the NVIDIA audio driver can cause any issues for two reasons:
1- I have it installed on my PC. It's essential to me as I connect my PC to TV using HDMI when play flat games, I can hear the sound from TV with one single cable you know.
2- The driver itself remains inactive until you use it. When you do this, you actually "Trigger" it and change its statue to "Active" when you finish the driver task, it will return Inactive again and so on. This is true for any Windows PC driver that is not in use.
Well done my friend and best regards!