IMac headphone jack sound drop

Hi everyone,
My 27 iMac 3.06 GHz is dropping the sound from the headphone jack after a few minutes of playing audio. If I adjust the volume with the keyboard the sound comes back...for a few minutes again. If I use the on-board speakers for sound output the sound never drops.
Is anyone else experiencing sound from the headphone jack dropping on the new 27" iMacs? Any suggestions on what might be causing it?
I plan to take it to the apple store as I am multiple other problems at the moment with the machine, but I figured I would find out if this is an isolated incident or if others are having the same issues (a search of the forums did not reveal similar problems)

I have a whole lab (30) of new imacs and the headphone jacks need a lot to be desired. My headphones all worked on the emacs I had last year; they work on my laptops, but most are crackling and also in some cases causes Type to Learn to actually pause. When I pay $1000 dollars per machine I would think the headphone jack would work. After all how many years now have people been putting headphone jacks in computers? You would think they would have it down perfect by now. But each time I get a new set of macs I have problems: ibooks - the wire to the LCD was being pinched by the hinge - 15 out of 30 now don't work; macbooks- hard drive failures. It is interesting that I have imacs purchased in 2000 that are still functioning as they should - just can't update them past panther in most cases. Will Apple admit this problem with headphone jacks?

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