Macintosh question!

I've got something that really boggles me and I figured I'd post it here and see if anyone knows what it might be.

For those that read my LJ infrequently, about 6 weeks ago I purchased a 15" Powerbook from Apple. It's the higher-end model with a Superdrive (DVD-RW), 1x512 Megs of RAM, and an 80 GB hard drive.

Earlier tonight, I got home, took the machine out of sleep, and tried playing an MP3. The sound that I got was... garbled. Upon further examination, the right speaker had sound that was somewhat garbled, and the left speaker didn't have any sound. This was over the JBL Creature II speakers that I also got with the Powerbook.

I tried hooking up a cheap pair of computer speakers that I had, and got the opposite: somewhat garbled sound out the left speaker but not the right. I'm sure I didn't have any wires crossed, because I used the balance controls in the sound control panel to isolate each channel. Obviously, unplugging and plugging in any of the sound cables again did not resolve the problem. Nor did wiggling them, to rule out loose connections. I also checked the system logs, and there was nothing of interest.

By this point, I was cursing quite a bit (profanity: the language all programmers know best!) and rebooted the machine in a fit of frustration.

And suddenly the speakers worked again, and have continued to play music just fine for the last hour or so.

Has anyone else ever seen anything like this happen with a computer, Powerbook or otherwise? I'd sure be interested in knowing what went on.

Thanks...