I've been reading some posts where people have had problems with a sound card containing C-Media's CM8738 chip.

I'm happy to report a successful installation of this card.

It did not work at first, however. On the existing installation, Linux correctly detected it, however when it proceeded to configure it, it indicated a problem. IIRC, it mentioned either an IRQ or kernel problem. The information screen also mentioned looking at ALSA.

When the previous sound card (an older Creative Ensoniq AudioPCI) was reinstalled, it was not automatically detected at the next bootup (it may have remained as part of the configuration, even though it had been removed), and during the loading of KDE, the tune that had played previously, did not. But a music CD played fine afterwards.

At this point, thinking that something may have happened to the sound, I decided to remove the AudioPCI card again, replace it with the CM8738, and did a fresh reinstall of Linux (re-partitioned and all). Upon completion of the new install, the CM8738 was detected. This time, it was successfully configured, and is now working perfectly.

Not much was installed afterwards, so reinstalling Linux from scratch wasn't a major issue for me.