Comment 7 for bug 658951

I have a solution to this problem!

First, let me mention, I tried reverting to 2.6.32 w/ alsa 1.0.21a w/ no change and also using the 'crack of the day' ubuntu audio packages.

The key to the fix is in the difference between 1.0.21a and 1.0.23 tho. I noticed it because on another machine I have scripts I had to create to switch between 44/48/96 rates manually by updating pulse and alsa config files and restarting pulse. (because linux audio is so wonderfull! as long as you know exactly what you want and everything about everything... or are happy with everything being resampled to 48000 ;P)

Changing two things in the /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf file and then kicking alsa (restart alsa, altho im not sure what kick it really needs alsa-utils restart / alsa-utils reset, try whatever or reboot)

defaults.pcm.compat 0
defaults.pcm.minperiodtime 5000 # in us

remove those two things from that file and kick alsa and things will work again, digital and analog output both work again on my sblive value.

I did not test to see which one of them or both was the problem, I'll let someone else do that wonderful task.

I would like to note one odd thing that happened back in the lucid versions of alsa and persist till now with the sblive value..

It is best witnessed by using mplayer in the command line to play an audio file.

The audio will start to play, but the counter will be moved up by 2 seconds or so and then stuck, then once that point is reached, it will continue on as normal! This can happen when using -ao pulse or -ao alsa w/ pulseaudio dead. wierd! But it works never the less! perhaps related to this new default minperoidtime ...

Thanks and Enjoy!