When I plug my headphones into the headphone/optical out jack programs hang

I have an iMac 20 inch LCD. On the back their is a jack with a picture of headphones, but it is also labeled as "optical out". I plug my headphones in and they work. Great. That is not my problem today.
My problem is that whenever I plug the headphones in or unplug them, iTunes (and other apps using audio) hangs and when I try to adjust the volume with the keyboard buttons nothing happens for 15 seconds or more and then the volume changes, not that anything is able to play. If I wait for a minute or so then all my applications start working fine again and I am able to hear my music and adjust the volume.
What in the world is going on?
1.8 Ghz G5 1.25GB RAM   Mac OS X (10.3.9)  

Thank you. That is good information.
Does this mean that there is nothing I can do about the delay? When I think of a delay, I think of maybe 10 seconds. I am having to wait for a minute or more for my audio to switch. While I wait, I have no audio and any audio program hangs. Is there a setting I can change? It seems rather ridiculous that I have to wait so long just to switch from internal speakers to headphones.
It is like this on other Mac machines? Or it is just my iMac? I hate to compare Mac to Windows, but on Windows or Linux computers the switch is instantaneous.

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