Yes, welcome to glitch city. The game froze on me along with major framerate issues.
I'm getting this audio glitch too. I stopped playing after a couple hours because it was so annoying. :(
It's definately related to combat, as that is when I start hearing it. I checked the audio options, and all I saw was volume controls, no way to really effect it.
I really hope they patch that. No idea how something so horrendously annoying got past their testing.