IMac Aluminum Sound Quality Distorted

I am experiencing distortion (sounds like there is a little bit of overloading) on my new 24" iMac Intel 2.4Ghz through the speakers, with headphones and with external speakers. OS (10.4.10) is up-to-date...Very frustrating seeing that I want to record and mix with this system. Anybody else experiencing this situation???

Since my last post, I've updated to 10.5.2 and the issue still exists.
In addition, recently I've been doing some recording in GarageBand and have not noticed the issue while using headphones. This may be due to the fact that I'm usually listening back to the recording for no more than two - three minutes at a time, and usually much shorter intervals than that. Since the issue is sporadic, once every 10-20 minutes or so, I'm not surprised that I haven't run into it there. I'll have to try again listening for an extended period. This issue does not exist at all on my MacBook.
This issue is getting more annoying every day. The iMac serves as our TV, watching abc.com, hulu.com, etc., so I notice it frequently. Has anyone heard anything from Apple on this? Or reports on other tech sites or blogs?

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