Comment 1 for bug 36486

Bus overload. There are limits and unless a particular program is going to do buffering then there are going to be sound dropouts when the bus is completely saturated.

If Ubuntu is saturating the bus more than Slackware (e.g. it has found drivers / settings that let your hard disks transfer data faster, your video card is now using binary drivers and is also transfering more data etc.) then your only way out is for sound playing software to do more buffering so that it can go longer before an under run occurs.

sblives are notiorious bus hogs and a lot of mobo manufacturers have pointed fingers at them for system instability due to that.