[CentOS] Sound Stutters and Sputters then dies

Hey Y'all,

Recently my sound has been misbehaving. The issue exists when I play sound using Rhythmbox, Totem Movie Player, or even Youtube video in Firefox or Chrome. The sound stutters and drops out. Sounds very rough. On Youtube the sound will eventually just die and can not be restarted until the browser is shut down and restarted.

I've had issues related to Repo Forge packages in the past but there are no Repo Forge packages on my system.

[mlapier@mushroom ~]$ rpm -qa | grep rf [mlapier@mushroom ~]$

Does anyone out there have some magic incantations to make Yum re-install the sound system?

CentOS release 6.3 (Final) Linux mushroom.patch 2.6.32-279.11.1.el6.i686 #1 SMP Tue Oct 16 14:40:53 UTC 2012 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux