[LUNI] ALSA weirdness

[Sten Turpin]

A while ago, I was running with a SBLive sound card on a 5-piece Altec 
Lansing speaker system. After a couple weeks (right in the middle of Q3A!!), 
sounds got all poppy and fizzy like the speakers were blown. It was my 
assumption that they, in fact, _were_ blown (Q3 might've been up a *little* 
loud), and I figured I'd replace them eventually. However, it' was a low 
priority; lower, in fact, than upgrading my sound card. So, when I did 
upgrate (to a rockin' Hercules Fortissimo II), I was very surprised when my 
speakers sounded as good as the day I got them! 

I was very pleased, until a couple days later, when they started popping and 
fizzing again. I went nuts trying to find a problem with the speakers, but 
after I'd quadruple-checked every connection, I tried hooking up a pair of 
headphones to the card, and, sure enough, it was the same popping and fizzing 
coming through the headphones. 

SO... I went through a few possible solutions and ended up re-running 
alsaconf. That did the trick; everything sounds fine now, and I'm totally 
puzzled as to why this would be happening. The popping and fizzing survived 
multilple shutdowns and reboots over the months, so why would reloading the 
drivers be any different? 

I tried looking around the web for similar issues with ALSA, but I'm having a 
hard time describing the problem in a manner that a search engine can 
comprehend. 

Also, anyone know how to get the headphone jack to stop being muted on this 
card? Thanks!
-Sten