Serious Sound Problems

Hey,

I just upgraded most of the packages on my computer and now when I start up I believe the line-in channel of the recording thing for my sound is turned on and I get that wonderful screeching noise. In KDE I have turned it off but until I log in the sound is screechy. After I mute the line-in channel or something and the God forsaken screech is gone, My speakers sound extremely scratchy. Almost as if the master volume was WAY to high... but they are still scratchy even if i change the master volume to 50%. I am using ALSA and kARTS.

How can I mute that line-in channel after the sound modules are loaded?
And how can I get rid of this stupid scratchy noise?

Thanks so much!

You can use the alsamixer commandline interface or install alsamixergui to mute channels and adjust volume. 8)

Yea i just realized that you can use the arrow keys in alsamixer to get more channels (go figure eh?)

Anyways I'm using an Intel ICH5 onboard card and the channel that needed to be muted was:

Analog to IEC958 Output

Thanks for the help!