Audio skips/stutters every now and then!?

[idyll]

I have a 24" iMac with the 2.8GHz processor and 2GB of RAM.

I installed Leopard on it as soon as it came out and everything has been running fine except for one little problem...

Ever since yesterday my audio has been stuttering every now and then. It feels like it is when a certain pitch is reached, but I know very little about audio to be able to tell. I also wouldn't really call it stuttering..

What happens is when I am playing a song, it skips a part of it (about a second or less long, where I hear nothing) and just keeps on playing. It is really annoying, and when I am watching a movie I miss some words here and there. Basically, it doesn't matter what I'm playing. As long as it has audio it will skip it. When playing flash videos on the web (ie youtube) it not only skips the audio but also the video for that brief second.

What could be causing this? What can I do, besides reinstalling Leopard? I'd really hate to have to do that. Any audio drivers I can download or something like that?

 

[WildCowboy]

Do you have any other processes going on at the time?

My PowerBook frequently hiccups in iTunes just as the Growl notification for a new song starts to disappear. It seems like your machine should be able to handle seemingly simple things like this, but if there's a very demanding process happening in the background for even a brief time, it can cause hiccups in audio and video.