Intermittent Audio Output on iMac with Mini-Jacked Speakers

Friends,

A decades long user, I have 99.3 days worth music in iTunes, and a pair of first gen Harmon Kardon Sound Sticks for analog playback jacked into the headphone output on a Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2019 iMac.

The issue is, randomly, the audio from the speakers jacked into iMac stops playing even through I can see the track is playing in iTunes. There’s no rhyme nor reason to when, or which track. If I hit rewind to start the track again, maybe sound will start coming from the speakers.... maybe not. If I rewind it again, it starts. Or maybe not. Additionally, if I want to “rewind” a track midway through (to listen to a solo or something) the audio may stop even through the track continues to count down in iTunes. The silence may last one track or more, and then randomly cut back in when a next track begins.

Needless to say, random, intermittent bugs are nearly impossible to diagnose because there’s no pattern to hang on to.

I don’t expect this will garner any solution, and I’m probably the one person out here having the problem...