Internet Tuner

That's strange. What power adapter are you using? Maybe check if your cables are too close to power sources? Not sure why this is happening in your system.

Does yours have a power adapter? Mine came with a micro usb cable, which I plug into a usb-wall socket adapter which is plugged into a standard socket.

Streaming Sirius/XM from my smartphone results in annoying dropouts. Streaming music I have downloaded on my smartphone works well.

Hi milpai, The crackling noise has stopped. I guess I had a loose connection.

I have the ASUS BT400 plugged into my computer now. Bluetooth works really well, both with iTunes and streaming. Only drawback of the unit is that it doesn't support APT-X. 

ASUS has a $5 rebate - you can pay $0.50 to have them process it faster! (I did). 

Jim,
I have not streamed Sirius/XM from my phone. But I do stream Spotify and other apps with no dropouts.
The power adapter does not come with the unit. I used a Apple 12W power adapter. You may be right that the Asus is not aPT-X compliant. How did you find that out?
I went the manual mail route for the rebate.

Re the aPT-X, I saw some specs on the BT400 which including a list of supported protocols. aPT-X was not among them. Also they don't advertise it, which they probably would (as does the BluMe).

I had to re-install the software but now I'm really happy with both the BluMe and the ASUS, including the sound quality.