I am also having the audio problem. I have an iMac i7 (8GB memory, external FW800 RAID 5 for videos, internal HD for audio) and recently switched from FCP7 to PPro CS6. Before that I remember trying CS5.5 and having a similar problem. I thought it might be limited to my hardware, but it does the same thing on my recently acquired MacBook Pro as well: The audio randomly drops out, and pausing-restarting will bring it back… till the next drop out. I’m not editing anything particularly complex, but I am working natively with Canon h.264 files most of the time.
I should mention that the audio drops out nomatter what format it is in (.wav, .mp3, .aiff, .m4a), and nomatter whether it is 44100hz or 48000hz. Rendering the audio doesn’t help, drop-outs still occur.
I spent two hours on the phone with Adobe, and they had no clue as to what would cause this issue. They had my try running premiere in a new user account, even took over my computer via Adobe Connect tor try and solve the problem. I was about to re-format and re-install my system, thinking that might be the issue, when I edited a sequence on my new MacBook and it had the same issue. I’m surprised more people haven’t discussed this.