Well, I searched google and the forums here, but I couldn't find any help so I guess I'll start a thread.

The problem I have is that when a sound is played within Slackware 10.2 there is an annoying popping sound that shows up every 10 seconds or so. It is not too loud either; I have to really listen for it.

And it doesn't seem to be KDE specific, as this occured in Fluxbox and blackbox. I tried increasing the buffer size in the KDE control panel as well and that did not work. I even tried turning the volume down on everything in alsa and leaving only necessary sliders to play music without any luck. Also, this is strange as well, when I am not playing anything, I do not get the popping noise.

It's also important to note that I do not get the popping noise in Windows XP and that I have tried changing the IRQ in my NForce2 mobo and even moving the sound card to a new PCI slot with no success. I'm not sure what left I could do. Thanks for any suggestions in advance.

P.S. Here are my system specs, in case it is of use.

AthlonXP 2000+ Palomino
3 x 256 pc2100 ram
Asus A7N8X NForce 2 Deluxe v1.0
Audigy 2 ZS
Radeon 9800 256mb Pro
500 watt antec power supply
CD/DVD drive is not connected to the sound card (never knew what that little cable did anyway)

Which module are you using to run your sound card? Also, is it running Alsa/Jack, etc. as the sound server? If it's running fine unde Windows rules out phsyical problem with speaker cables or internal connections, so maybe a driver issue.

I'm using the kernel that installs with slackware 10.2; so it's 2.4.? something. I use alsa for the sound server. I'm guessing alsa is either built into the kernel or is a module, yes. I'm not sure what the default configurations are for the install kernel though, to be exact.

play an mp3 from the console and see if it still makes the sound

Sorry if this is newbish for me to say. But I am not aware of how to play an mp3 in the console. All the music players that I know of require an x server to run.

man mpg321
this is installed with slack 10.2

cd to a directory with an mp3

type:
mpg321 song.mp3

ok, I went ahead and did that. The song played still had the popping noise. I guess this means the problem might be with alsa. I've never messed with alsa outside of the mixer settings though, so I wouldn't know what to do. Do ya have anything else in mind Finlay? Thanks for your previous help.

no clue, try the 2.6 kernel

lol, maybe I'll try that in the near future then. I've never had much luck building the kernel myself though. Thanks

the 2.6 kernel in the testing folder on cd 2 pretty much has built in support for everything, it is a huge kernel that takes a while to boot up but considering the way memory is set aside for the kernel you aren't wasting any memory.

all you need to do is uninstall the 2.4 kernel source package and install the kernel 2.6 packages then reboot.

the safe bet is to make a backup of your /boot folder in case something doesn't go right.

I figured out how to fix the problem! I ran alsaconf and now I don't get the popping. I guess that is something I should have done when I installed Slackware. Thanks for your advice Finlay. I wasn't sure how to upgrade to kernel 2.6 like you said, but I bet that would have worked as well.