I've tried all the fixes, and none have worked. The distros I've tried so far are Fedora Core 6, Kubuntu Edgy, and Kubuntu Feisty, which I'm on now. The furthest I've gotten is this webpage...
http://opensrc.org/alsa/index.php?page=intel8x0
I'm a bit lost in terms of what to text edit, but I do understand that page, and have tried most of what they say, BUT still I get pops, popping, click, and crackles. To me this is Linux's/KDE's only flaw.
I also tried to install FreeBSD, but got lost when I tried to make the NVidia driver. (last night)
I even tried to install some custom made OSS driver for the chipset, but it did not work.
Again, playing from command line produces the same errors.