Sound Quality
 

I'm using slackware 8.0 with kde 2, and i just updated to the 2.4.9 kernel from 2.4.5. Now my sound quality sounds crackly and poppy after i turn the volume up to a certain point (no, its not ridiculously loud). i also noticed that xmms always starts at 70% volume now, when it goes beyond that, thats when it starts to sound like crap. Yes, i installed the correct soundcard drivers (sblive). What do i do to fix this?

check the volume level on the kmixer - if kde has the volume turned down far enough, then the output from programs like xmms will be static-y and crackly.