Ah ecco… davo la colpa alla [stanchezza|vecchiaia|estate|ora tarda], invece non me lo ero sognato:
The Audio Update 2007-001 addresses an issue with version 1.0 of the Mac OS X 10.4.10 Update in which a “popping” sound might be heard with some external speakers on Intel-based Mac. This update is recommended for all Intel-based Macs running Mac OS X 10.4.10.
Update disponibile nei posti soliti, o via SoftwareUpdate (richiede reboot, anche se…
beepbeep:~ zen$ kextstat | grep -i audio
   77    4 0x7c4000   0x17000    0x16000    com.apple.iokit.IOAudioFamily (1.6.0b7) <76 35 11>
   79    1 0x8ae000   0x4b000    0x4a000    com.apple.driver.AppleFWAudio (2.1.0fc9) <78 77 40 11>
   80    0 0x8f9000   0x3000     0x2000     com.apple.driver.AppleMLANAudio (2.1.0fc9) <79 78 40 11>
   82    0 0x915000   0x4000     0x3000     com.apple.driver.AudioIPCDriver (1.0.2) <77 5 4 3 2>
  102    0 0x9d6000   0xc000     0xb000     com.apple.driver.IOBluetoothSCOAudioDriver (1.9f8) <77 64 11>
rimango dell’idea che un kextunload && kextload potrebbero farlo fare, alle procedurine. :)