HT Omega Striker 7.1 Issue

After building my current system and getting frustrated that Realtek wasn't producing any passable sound for my 5.1 speakers, I decided to pick up a soundcard and found the Striker 7.1 from HT Omega had great reviews.

I installed the Windows 7 drivers from their site and had beautiful sound for about a minute before it started deteriorating and I was listening to something from my music that sounded like the devil singing underwater. I replugged the jacks in and got not change, so I started searching around and found some solutions on this site. Merging the Windows 7 and vista drivers (-HsMgr.exe) worked okay, but I had some pops and static in the sound. Installing just the vista drivers worked pretty well for awhile wither fewer pops and static, but the sound again deteriorated after about 15 minutes.

Now I am at a loss. Is this a driver, software, or hardware problem? All I can currently think of is that I'm using a RC of Windows 7 professional 64bit that was out just before the official release, and perhaps I should reformat with whats currently on the shelves. I'd much rather find out I should try that than return the card or find out my pci slot is faulty.