Delay before sound starts playing

[Fred Moyer]

I'm trying to create a stack where the user can play a solo  
instrument along with a sound file that plays an accompaniment. At  
times in the music, the accompaniment stops for a while and the solo  
instrument needs to keep playing; at these places, I've had the sound  
file pause and wait for a mouseclick from the user at which point  
IMMEDIATELY the sound file must play again.  I first made this stack  
back in the Hypercard days and it worked flawlessly. Then I tried to  
move it to Revolution, experienced problems but finally got it  
working with some "Rube Goldberg" solutions. Now something has  
changed (OSX?, Revolution?, Quicktime?) and it's not dependable. The  
problem is that if there's too long a delay with no input from the  
user, the computer's sound "system" seems to goes into some kind of  
hibernation mode so that when the user clicks the mouse, there is a  
delay before the music starts again. (I notice that there's even a  
delay in "beep" in Revolution if the computer has been silent for a  
while.)

Has anyone else dealt with this issue? Any possible solutions?

Thanks
Fred Moyer