I am running Slackware 10.1 (Just update it from Slackware 10.0.0 which I installed yesterday). I am having a sound issue in that when a wav file is played (for instance an alert from gaim), there SOMETIMES is a weird messed up tone accompanying the .wav file sound... this has been happening ever since I installed Slackware. The card I have is a SB Live!... Perhaps it is conflicting with something? I am not sure. Any ideas?

Which SB Live! card is it? There's 7 in the family, and they have differing chipsets.

I am unsure as to which exact card it is... The cheapest one they had I do believe.
However, I do know it is supposed to use the EMu10k1 module.... That is what Mandrake assigned to it and it worked fine under Mandrake out of the box. Also... One thing that might be the problem though I'm not sure how to turn it off to test it is that if I run aumix and turn up the PCM volume, I get a high pitched squeel continously played through the speakers.

-Diaphugo

Just to stick my nose in this convo..
It sounds like the SB Live! Value, I've ran it before with linux.
It is the cheapest SB card out there but still of decent quality.

Sounds like you have the correct module for it too, but just my observation.

Yes, correc there sir. It is the SB Live Value. Thanks.

Is this "weird tone" only when playing WAV files? Does it happen when you play an MP3 or OGG? What about DVD playback? Games?

The reason I ask is because I had a similar problem with my SB Live! 24-bit (ca0106 chipset), and it was fixed by changing the default sound device from "auto" to OSS in KDE's sound system.

I have not tried anything but .wav files yet as I have non mp3's on that machine... I'll try a DVD when I get home from work. I doubt it's the KDE option because I'm in Dropline Gnome (Though I did test and the problem carries over to KDE), but maybe there's an option such as that in Gnome that I can set to not use 'auto'...

I'm also having sound problems with Slack 10. I can play CDs just fine (workbone, gnome CD player, etc.) but when I try to play any digital audio file (ogg, wav, mp3, etc.), the players (mpg321, xmms, etc.) either lock up or play a distorted metal-static-screech. I want to assume that this is some sort of codec or lib problem, but I'm not sure where to start looking for the solution. (Yes, the problem happens under root, too.) I haven't recompiled anything--everything is from the Slack CD. I'm using a Thinkpad 390e with esssolo1--I hoped that installing ALSA would solve the problem, but it didn't, although ALSA improved my CD output.

I'm not a newbie, but I am completely stumped. Anyone have any ideas?

It's more that I'm using KDE than KDE being the cause of the problem. The cause of the problem, for me, was the fact that soundcore was trying to use ALSA when the driver for my card (different chipset) isn't fully implemented and requires OSS.