New Mac mini audio problem - beeping from audio output

Hi Apple fans
Please help me. I recently purchased a new Mac mini from my local store. It's three-and-a-half weeks old as of today.
It's an i5 2.3 with 8 GB of corsair RAM.
I like to watch movies and TV on it and have the audio connected to an external amp and speakers via the headphone output.
After a reboot today I lost the sound through that output. All that I hear through it now is an electronic beeping, six notes, descending in pitch, repeating.
I have no idea what it is, other than annoying since this happened on a brand new computer. Not looking forward to the idea of losing my mini for a week as Apple figure it out, but it may be all that's left to do.
Maybe somebody here can help me out - anyone have an idea what's going on? I did an fsck -fy already, and there seems to be nothing wrong, based on that check. For completeness sake, I ran the sound over a USB sound card, and the beeping noise was not there, and sound worked fine. Ditto for the internal speaker - no weird noise there, this seems limited to the headphone out port. I've tried different cables, and even amps, and a set of small speakers without amp. The noise is there when using the headphone jack, and it's absent when using the wee internal speaker or USB-based sound. Please help?
I captured the sound on a video which I've uploaded. It's kind of jarring, so keep your hand on the volume button.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUt8miCYcJQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUt8miCYcJQ
Thanks much for any input - it would be very much appreciated.
Pascal

Hi Pascal,
Certainly strange, but I have no ideas other than having it looked at by Apple.

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