It's not the soundsticks. I have a 12", when you wake it from a sleep, it gets a lag for a minute, so what happens is then you try to adjust the sound instantly, the little pic of the speaker cone shows up and keeps blinking on and off and the pop sounds are actually just the sounds the book makes when it is adjusting the sound, they are just evenely spaced about 5 seconds apart. Then the lag goes away and it's all good. I'm not sure if that's what's causing the problem, but if it is, it's quite normal.