[NTLUG:Discuss] inconsistent sound

[Kevin Brannen]

Has anyone every had a system (or heard one) that plays sound at an 
inconsistent speed?  For example, I'm using xmms to play some MP3s I 
ripped from my CDs, and usually it's fine, but from time to time it will 
slow down enough it's quite noticable, then speed up to be too fast as 
if it's trying to catch up before it goes back to the correct speed.

If I didn't know better, I'd say it was bogged down by some other 
process like updatedb, but it ain't so.  I'll run it with xosview up so 
I can see instantaneous changes, and the CPU is barely being used, and 
the disk is only being used in minimal amounts.  It's a single AMD 
2.4Ghz Athlon with an AC97 chip on an MSI MB w/ 1G of RAM, running Suse 
9.0; so I'm having trouble imagining this isn't a powerful enough 
system.  Especially since my old 500Mhz P3 never had this problem, of 
course it had a SBLive! in it.  I'm wondering if the builtin AC97 is the 
problem, but that seems strange.  It doesn't waver all the time, but 
it's almost guaranteed to do it at least once per 10 songs, sometimes more.

Has anyone heard of this before, or does anyone have thoughts on what to 
look for?

Thanks,
Kevin