I also experience this problem on a Thinkpad T61 which is a dualcore machine with 4GB of RAM meaning you can even face this problem on decent hardware. I mostly notice this "stutter"-behaviour when hearing mp3s using audacious with the pulseaudio soundserver. It also happens even on low cpu-load. Using ALSA directly works fine for me.
I also experience this problem on a Thinkpad T61 which is a dualcore machine with 4GB of RAM meaning you can even face this problem on decent hardware. I mostly notice this "stutter"-behaviour when hearing mp3s using audacious with the pulseaudio soundserver. It also happens even on low cpu-load. Using ALSA directly works fine for me.