Audio skips at certain increments

[ChrisDiCola]

Hey all, new to this forum as a member but I've been lurking these threads for a while- finally decided to pony up and join the discussion.

I've got an issue in ProTools M-Powered 8 on a MacBook Pro regarding playback, here's the scenario as of right now:

I've got a master fader and one track of audio (only using the stock EQ plugin-wise), I made the sound with Xpand but I planned on looping it, so once I was happy with it I bounced it down, did away with the instrument track, and now I'm working with a wav. Playing from the top, it takes 16 seconds for the audio to skip. It's not a glitchy, clicky, or popping type of skip, it sounds as if the audio was just muted, and by second 17 it's back.

If I start playback at 0:08, it does this little skip at 0:24.

I've had this issue for a little while now, I pull up Task Manager and nothing is acting unusual, I pull up the System Usage window in ProTools and it never reaches beyond 2% of my CPU, but it's as if my system is struggling to read even the smallest amount of audio.

Doesn't matter what buffer size I'm running at, I keep it 2048 during playback anyway. The curious part is that it happens in these increments.

I'm probably due for some type of overhaul (and PT 11), but I've got projects and clients pretty consistently so I need to get this handled.

Thanks a ton for any help, it's much obliged.

MacBook Pro
2.4 GHzIntel Core i7 Processor
4 GB of RAM, 750 GB SATA Disc
Mac OSX Lion 10.7.5

M-Audio Profire 2626 (Firewire, runs up to 24 bit and 192kHz)
ProTools M-Powered 8.0.3

[ChrisDiCola]

Guess I stumped yall!