LinuxQuestions.org - KDE Sound Playback Very Choppy [SOLVED]

My sound playback in all kde applications (including system sounds) is very choppy, as if the cpu were heavily overloaded, however my cpu usage is a mere ~2%. I have tried changing the settings in the sound system control dialog (Menu > Settings > Sound and Multimedia > Sound System), to set the sound buffer as large as possible and to give the highest priority to the sound system, but this leads to nothing. Do I need to edit any config files to change this? Sounds in XMMS used to do this, but I changed the buffer time and the period time, and this solved the problem in gnome, but does not work in KDE.

In the hardware tab on the dialog, the audio device is set to autodetect and the quality is set to default. Everything else is off.

My kernel is 2.6.18-5 (debian stable stock), the sound card (lspci) is...

Code:

00:04.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 AC'97 Audio Controller (rev a2)

... a bog-standard AC'97, which I do have a 5.1 system connected to, so it would be nice to get this going too (cant actually tell if it is working). I have an asoundrc in my home folder (could this be the problem???) that is as follows:

Code:

pcm.!default {

    type plug

    slave.pcm "surround51"

    slave.channels 6

    route_policy duplicate

}

I use the !default device in gnome, so do I need to update anything in kde?

Thanks for any help given, and I am sorry if the question is a little long. I have googled around for a bit, but all pages seem to suggest changing settings which I have already fiddled with. Thanks!