Delayed Sounds in Snow Leopard

[mjgunn]

I purchased a new Mac Mini 2.53ghz the day they were released, and so far I'm really happy with it, except for one weird bug I've been experiencing. If I IM a friend in ichat, or receive a a IM, the sound is delayed by 1-2 seconds, and I experience the same delay with the sound when I empty my trash.

Now if I'm im'ing a friend quickly back and forth, the ichat sound has no delay, but if no IMs are sent for minute or two the first one to come or go has the delayed sound again. Installed leopard on a second partition today because I wanted to see how WoW played on the mini without some really terrible OpenGL issues like SL has (worked much better btw, bring on 10.6.2 with its OGL fixes), and I was using ichat in it with no delayed sounds.

Has any experienced anything like this, have any ideas for a fix?

 

[mjgunn]

So no one else has experienced this?

 

[Kirkafur]

I've noticed the mail chime delayed by a few seconds, but never thought anything of it.

 

[Osetjka]

This problem sounds suspiciously similar to another topic I posted awhile back. Basically sound effects in the desktop get delayed (also a subtle cracking sound before the effect played). Subsequent sounds play correctly but then the problem repeats when no sound was played after a certain period. No one replied to my question if I recall correctly. I guess this problem is not that common, though I know a couple of MBPs have the issue in Snow Leopard (still there after 10.6.2). Puzzling..

 

[mjgunn]

Osetjka, you just described the problem exactly, much better than I was able to. iChat is where the issue is most easily noticed for me, but it's pretty much any sound in the OS.

I was speaking with a friend of mine who's a fanatic about little things like this that won't be noticed by most people but will annoy the crazier amongst us (and yes, I fully admit this sound issue is a somewhat OCD nitpick). He mentioned that he had experienced the same problem on a iMac he had several years ago. After some reading around he found that the system actually powers down the sound card when it isn't being used, and the delay in audio was from it being powered back up. Anyone else heard anything like this?

 

[MaskingTape]

Thank god pother people are having this issue. It's driving me insane and it never happened in Leopard. It's SOOOOOOOOO annoying. I was really hoping for it to be fixed in 10.6.2 but it wasn't. :-(