Power saving schemas

Especially notebooks do use power saving schemas.
A tweak is to disable this option to improve sound quality.

Some motherboards have enhanced power saving options in the BIOS that you might need to turn off.

Running on battery power to eliminate the switching power supply is recommended too.

Evidence.

A loop back recording (sound card out in to sound card in) with RMAA

This is really horrible. Switching to battery power do gives you a clean DC source but at the same time the power saving kicks in generating a lot of distortion.