It’s always been like this and i could never find a solution for it. It happens always when pulseaudio is used. Somehow java doesn’t get along with it, so the audio gets shut off frequently, like, i can hear the sound, but it tends to swallow bits and pieces of it, sometimes it produces a total silence with no comebacks. That’s only the case with pulseaudio, i had the same using other distros. If using ALSA only it doesn’t happen. But i’d prefer using PA, cause there are other issues with the sole ALSA, which are even worse. On Ubuntu they have fixed it i believe, but it’s still here on opensuse. Ideas?..
Using openSUSE 11.4, Audio: HDA-Intel.