The cracking issue with the R501 is actually a design choice rather than flaw. You see, the R501 has its built-in amp turned up higher than it should be. This is to facilitate the speakers use with low-end home theatre systems that sometimes have very low volume outputs. So, this causes small problems when used with PCs as sound cards have amps of their own and this will push the threshold of the R501 over the limit at high volumes.

An issue? Yes, but its because the R501 is targeted at a different demographic which is the home theatre/hi-fi users and not computer users.