Quote Originally Posted by Pete View Post
gaps in the drive signal are much more disruptive than silencing other stuff.
Yep, or just additional noise and distortions in general. Laptops are particularly bad about current creating noise on the jacks when they are plugged into DC rather than running only on battery. Older computers or computers that haven't been defragged very much or ever, are shut down improperly, don't have quite as much wattage as they should, etc. also are going to experience this kind of skipping more frequently than a brand new computer. Python would not be my first choice for an application that needs to interface like this at the hardware level, either.