Sound in 5.x

Hi all,

A while ago I sent a message to this list saying that all my problems
with cracks and pops and skips in sound had been resolved by moving my
soundcard to an otherwise unused IRQ. I tested this on three different
soundcards in two different systems.

However I have since found my conclusion to be wrong. The IRQ issue
might have been part of the problem, although I cannot say this for
sure. 
The important thing I have noticed is that the problem gets worse over
time! Immediately after booting up my system, sound is - from what I can
tell - smooth and without (or with very few) hickups. However after a
few hours it starts coming back, and at this point - after a 4-5 day
uptime - it's completely impossible to listen to any kind of music. 

Every second or so it sounds as if the soundcard buffer is repeating
itself for a fraction of a second, giving me a sort of 'rrrr' sound. It
sounds just like when I close the lid of my laptop - it's as if all the
hardware in the system just freezes up for 0.1 seconds. However in this
case it's only the sound .. Everything else seems and feels smooth.

This has been a problem since I installed FreeBSD 5.0 a long time ago,
and we're now at 5.2 and the issue still hasn't been resolved. I've
tested on three different sound chipsets so far (CMI, Crystal and
EMU10k1), and they all display the same problem - although to a varying
degree.

I really hope someone can look into this (again) soon - I for one will
be very happy to help debugging. Working is hard without music,
especially when everyone around me is making as much noise as they
usually do... :-/

I'm *not* using INVARIANTS or any other debugging options in the kernel.


Still hoping ;)
/Eirik