Scrolling chirps while playing sound!

[Adam Funk <a24061@yahoo.com>]

Whenever I'm playing sound files (using xmms, grip and other
applications), the computer adds very short interruptions to the sound
when lines scroll on any visible application.

So if I have something spewing a lot of output to an xterm, it chirps a
lot if the whole xterm is visible; not at all if it's on a non-visible
desktop or if another application covers it; and a little if part of
the xterm is visible.

This happens with other GUI applications that have scrolling text
windows (such as Firefox when scrolling with the mouse wheel) and in
various desktops (xfce4, Gnome, KDE).

Here's some dpkg info about my sound daemon.
ii  esound                              0.2.35-2                           
un  esound-alsa                         <none>                             
ii  esound-clients                      0.2.35-2                           
ii  esound-common                       0.2.35-2                            

The sound card is a Creative Labs Soundblaster of some kind, about four
years old and not fancy.

Any suggestions for how to fix this or just identify the problem?

Thanks,
Adam