FC4/x86_64 and ALSA: [long] noise and distortion

[Nathaniel Reindl <fiction@sdf.lonestar.org>]

This is driving me nuts, and I'm considering pulling a jwz because of
it, ironically, for a reason involving the same bit of hardware.

For the past several months, I've been trying to figure out a sane way
to get the noise and distortion to go away, but alas, short of diving
into the ALSA code and digging around, I've found no way at all to get
rid of it.  I've tried four different cards (two emu10k1, one es1370,
and one intel8x0), and none of them solved the issue.

    Specifically and in respective order, the cards were:
    
        o 2x SoundBlaster Live! Value (same model, I read somewhere that
            people've experienced oddities where a simple swap with
            another card of the same model/release solved things)

        o SoundBlaster 128 as from a Compaq Presario 7000

        o the onboard RealTek audio on the ARIMA Rioworks HDAMC
            motherboard.  I forget what it is exactly, and lspci isn't
            much help.  This is going to be noisy to begin with, but
            it's exhibiting the same behavior as the previous three.

I've also ruled out bad audio hardware because the cards all work fine
in the Windows box I have sitting next to me.  No distortion, nothing.

What it sounds like more than anything is something along the lines of
capping.  I.e., if you were to hook this up to an o-scope, the
waveform's peaks would be most likely chopped clear off.  I can't
confirm that, though, due to the lack of an o-scope around here.

Audibly, it's really noticeable everywhere, especially the high-end.

An unacceptable answer, although well-founded, would be to suggest
bumping the volume down in the mixer and using a preamp to compensate.
I don't have the money to buy one or the time to hack one together, and
even then, something like that shouldn't be needed for something as
trivial as this.  What year is it again?

-- 
Nathaniel Reindl    http://www.corvidae.org/
    unemployed monkey (hire me!) and college student
    class schedule: http://www.corvidae.org/schedule.html
Fedora Core 4 kernel 2.6.12-1.1398_FC4 on an AMD Opteron 240

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