Strange audio distortion in video

Hi Everyone,
I have a Macbook Pro (2.3 ghz, 4 gb of ram, running dual displays) and for the last nine months or so I've been having bizarre (horribly angry robot voices) distortion in audio when running video, seemingly for no reason. Sometimes an action as simple as moving the mouse cursor will set it off, other times it just happens out of nowhere.
Typically this happens when using a flash program, streaming on Netflix, or running VLC. It's also happened with itunes and when watching dvds. When the problem starts I can make it go away by shutting down the offending application (typically a browser and VLC) and relaunching. If I don't shut down it affects all audio on the computer. This happens literally eight times a day, as is accompanied by twice-monthly kernel panics.
It happens regardless of whether I have my second display plugged in. It also happens regardless of the number of applications that are running. I can restart, have nothing running except the single tab in Firefox playing video, and it won't work. I've checked the usage via a widget called istat pro, and nothing seems amiss. I've also tried a complete hard disk wipe and reinstall, and it made no difference. I even went as far as having a friend in IT use the ASD disc ten times and it didn't catch anything.
Does anyone have any ideas? This is incredibly annoying and I would greatly appreciate any help.

is there a way to test for this, or would the problem have to be occurring while it is being tested in order to confirm?
This would be very hard to detect the exact cause. As the guy referred to, Apple techs just replace parts until the issue is solved.
Dave M.
MacOSG Founder/Ambassador  An Apple User Group  iTunes: MacOSG Podcast
Macsimum News Associate Editor  Creator of 'Mac611 - Mobile Mac Support'

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FYI
As discussed in Macbook Stuttering, Audio Distortion,
The solution to this problem is as follows:
The fix is to blow out nearly four years of dust (in my case), using the instructions given here (for replacing a fan...)
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/Installing-MacBook-Core-2-Duo-Fan/522/1
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Have you also noticed that the fan becomes loud when this is happening? Almost any time the fan starts running at high speed, it's because your processor is working hard and needs additional cooling.
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Just looking at the waveform confirmed my initial reaction: Way, way
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Waveform at 00:00:00:21. No distortion, only high levels can be seen on this waveform.
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PowerBook G5 Mac OS X (10.4.2)
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Can anyone help me with any references or resources for making the encoder not distort the audio samples when converting video files? I have tried multiple transcode settings and the distortion seems to be source dependent. Some files work, some do not.
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Did you import 16-bit audio from your camcorder?
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