I have tried the sudo kill suggestion, below. It gives me two pops with the audio, but doesn't restore anything. I still have to shut down and reboot to get my audio working again.
I have also uninstalled Perian. Any other tricks?
I have been enjoying all of these One-Liners (ChucKles? TweecKs? ChaiKus?)
http://electro-music.com/forum/topic-13512.html
Some of them kill my audio. Is there a way to clear or reset the audio engine without rebooting my MacBook?
It might not be this stuff that fries your Mac, but some sound component in combination with the latest system updates. I had to remove Perian (for which I used a complicated procedure), and apply Combo 10.5.8 (and then do a permissions repair).
You might try killing off coreaudiod. Do say
ps -ax | grep audio
so see the process number <pid> of coreaudiod, and then do 'sudo kill <pid>'. As it is a daemon, run by launchd (see 'man launchctl'), it will restart immediately. You may also try putting it to sleep, and awaken again.
Hans