Pauses in server sound

[Oni-Dracula]

When listening to any server at any bitrate, I hear short pauses in the sound about evert 5 seconds. I also get very loud screeching sounds every now and then (probably unrelated). I have tested this on a friends computer using Winamp3 and Music Match (evil). The shoutcast servers sounds just as distorted on his computer as mine, but when I connect to the same server using Music Match - it sounds fine. The only commonality between our two systems is the operating system. We both use the same copy of XP Corp.

There is no way in hell I'm using Music Match, so can anyone help?

p.s. this happens on both winamp2 and 3 both systems