I am running chinese pod on chrome/windows 10 with a good internet connection and find no pauses when running video or main dialogs, but do find that dialogue/expansion and dictation replays have an irritating pause at approximately the fourth-fifth character.
Is there something different about you how you load or deliver the dialogue replays there. It seems pretty common to me across all lessons.
I find that the first playback of each dialogue has a strong pause or stutter - usually three to five characters into the phrase, then it recovers to deliver the rest. It is more noticeable on the longer phrases.
It only happens for the first time, you play each dialog on the dialogue or expansion pages. If you playback the same sentence again, there is no pause, so I assume it is something related to how you download the audio for the first playback, but I do not get similar pauses in the lessons. Perhaps you could pre-download all the audio on the dialogue page when the user opens that tab so the pause is not seen, but perhaps there is a simpler reason because similar pauses do not happen on main lessons.