eSound crackling and pausing

["Brian McGroarty" <BMCGROARTY@high-voltage.com>]

When playing sound through eSound, I get a lot of stuttering and pauses; at
times I see the whole system pause, and most Gnome sound events happen up to
several seconds late, sometimes with static.

Playing sound through OSS (per xmms' output device selection) causes no
problem at all - sounds pristine.

I've got VIA 82C686A audio, kernel 2.4.0-test5 under Woody w/Helix - its an
ABit VT6x4 motherboard (Apollo Pro 133A) with a PIII 600EB.

Any known fix?