JuK through Arts was sounding kind of garbled and became unlistenable, so I spent 8 hours today getting Alsa working. Now I can listen to JuK through GStreamer which is much better, but a little "crackly" sometimes -- little ticks and pops occasionally.

Debian SID
2GHz Celeron / 768MB
KDE 3.2.1
ALSA

Any ideas?

Can't help you with the problem but I have noticed, on my laptop, that sound quality under XP is MUCH better that under Debian SID with ALSA. Why ? I don't know but the Designed for XP sticker gives me a hint.

>> but a little "crackly" sometimes -- little ticks and pops occasionally.

I don't get any crackling, popping etc under ALSA. Could it be a hardware problem on your machine ? What background stuff is running when this occurs ? Maybe a program is trying to play a sound file when one app is already using the card ?

Do these problems occur when using other apps to play sound ?

I don't think so. It sounded pretty good before I upgraded to a 2.6 kernel and ALSA. So I think it's more likely the way I've got things set-up.

What should I look for? Also, since you said alsa is working well for you, could you please post your lsmod? Thanks!

same problem. Except really crackling and poppy with arts, and it sounds clean with gstreamer.

edit: just tried using zinf with the arts output, and it sounded fine. i think it's a mix of arts and juk.