Comment 55 for bug 476652

The following workaround seems to have done the trick for me:

System: Ubuntu 10.04 amd64

File: /etc/pulse/default.pa
    Add " tsched=0" to the following line:
      load-module module-detect

See post #39 in this thread:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1471262