Whenever I play an MP3 in any KDE application (or artsplay), there is a strange noise that goes in the background along with the beat of the song. I'm almost certain it's a problem with KDE's decoding of MP3s on my system. WAV and OGG files play fine. If I decode an MP3 to WAV and then play it in KDE it works fine. If I use a 3rd-party program (like madplay or mpg123) to play the MP3 but wrap it with artsplay, it works fine. Playing MP3s in xine works fine, and playing MP3s in XMMS works fine, even if I use the arts output plugin. The only time this problem occurs is when a program uses arts to decode an MP3. Has anybody heard of this before? Can anybody help?
I'm using Gentoo Linux from stage 1 with an unmodified 2.6.6 kernel. I have KDE 3.2.2 and I'm using the ALSA driver (intel8x0/ac97) for a the internal nforce sound. I also have tried an Audigy II, and the problem persists. Prior installations of this same version of KDE with Gentoo have worked fine on this hardware. Thank you for any help.