the only thing keeping me away from this new version of kde (3.2.0 and above) was the fact that my AC97 sound card (8x0 driver) was playing sound too fast, no matter what application was used

finally, i have fixed it

i grabbed the latest kernel (2.6.6) and i did menuconfig, saying Y to sound support and M to Alsa sound card support, so all but one had the option as Module; i selected the pci driver intel8x0 to be modularized as well

installed the kernel, rebooted, ran alsaconf (first time i had gotten it to work in a 2.6 kernel) and it modified my /etc/modules.conf and /etc/modprobe.conf files; i ensured that all the correct modules were loaded (including oss compatibility), turned up the volume with alsamixer and started kde.... I Heard Normal Sound!!!

*note: i did this in slackware, but i have seen that this problem extends to other distros as well; hopefully the info here can be modified as necessary to solve fast sound problems

i am guessing that kde has a problem with having sound built-into the kernel