Why is my audio skipping sometimes and not at others?

[AC Question]

Don't know if anyone will be able to help but I've tried googling and I can't find anything that really answers the problem! The sound on my phone (moto g) has been strange for the past couple of weeks, sometimes it would be ok but then in calls and when playing music it would go really jerky and start skipping so I couldn't listen to anything but then after a while it would go back to normal. Since Sunday it's been consistently bad so I initiated a return for it and I have a returns label and have bought a new phone (haven't got it yet, it's still being delivered and could still return), but in the past hour it's gone back to normal. I know it isn't software because I did a factory reset on Tuesday and it made no difference and when I did the buzz test the sound was doing the same thing (though it's fine now). I'm worried now about going ahead and returning the phone because the shop may say it's not actually faulty. Any thoughts?

 

[Rukbat]

The CPU can't do both the music and whatever else it's doing without stopping one of them long enough for you to notice. It happens when you're running more apps than the phone can handle, which is why it's intermittent. Install an app like SystemPanelLite so you can see what's actually running, both when it happens and when it doesn't. You may find that one particular app, or some combination of apps, is causing it. Or you may find that running more than a few apps causes it. (The faster hardware gets, the sloppier "developers" get. Real developers trim both time and size from their apps; people who think they're developers are satisfied if the app runs on their phone with nothing else running. And if they're testing on a fast octacore CPU with a lot of RAM, any slop will run fast.)