Audio stuttering / CPU usage

Ever since the Nov 12th patch, my sound stutters drastically (all sounds, in and out of game).

The sound is fine if my character stares straight at the ground, but looking around at all brings on the lag.

System specs as follows:
Intel core2extreme Q6850 (3ghz)
4 GB RAM
Nvidia GTX260
Win 7 x64

Is there any way to fix the audio lag? It really ruins the game experience to have to run around staring at the ground =)
Lowering the graphics to the lowest I can doesn't help at all. Setting the affinity in the task manager doesn't help... anyone have ideas?
Devs aware of this issue?