Sound garbled in KDE (Solved)

[Featherfoot]

I am using KDE SC 4.9.3 and Linux 3.5.7-gentoo on an amd64 system. My problem is that sound notifications in KDE are garbled, while sound in flash and other outputs is fine.

The sound is tinny and garbled, almost as if the speaker is broken. As I noted sounds from other sources are fine.

I would like some suggestions on how to fix it.

emerge --info follows

bopper pulse # emerge --info
Portage 2.1.11.31 (default/linux/amd64/10.0/desktop, gcc-4.5.4, glibc-2.15-r3, 3.5.7-gentoo x86_64)
=================================================================
System uname: Linux-3.5.7-gentoo-x86_64-AMD_Phenom-tm-_II_X4_970_Processor-with-gentoo-2.1
Timestamp of tree: Wed, 21 Nov 2012 21:00:01 +0000
ld GNU ld (GNU Binutils) 2.22
app-shells/bash: 4.2_p37
dev-java/java-config: 2.1.11-r3
dev-lang/python: 2.7.3-r2, 3.1.5, 3.2.3
dev-util/cmake: 2.8.9
dev-util/pkgconfig: 0.27.1
sys-apps/baselayout: 2.1-r1
sys-apps/openrc: 0.11.5
sys-apps/sandbox: 2.5
sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.69
sys-devel/automake: 1.10.3, 1.11.6
sys-devel/binutils: 2.22-r1
sys-devel/gcc: 4.5.4
sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.7.3
sys-devel/libtool: 2.4-r1
sys-devel/make: 3.82-r3
sys-kernel/linux-headers: 3.6 (virtual/os-headers)
sys-libs/glibc: 2.15-r3
Repositories: gentoo
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64"
ACCEPT_LICENSE="* -@EULA"
CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-O2 -pipe"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/share/config /usr/share/gnupg/qualified.txt /usr/share/polkit-1/actions"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/dconf /etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/gentoo-release /etc/php/apache2-php5.4/ext-active/ /etc/php/cgi-php5.4/ext-active/ /etc/php/cli-php5.4/ext-active/ /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo /etc/texmf/language.dat.d /etc/texmf/language.def.d /etc/texmf/updmap.d /etc/texmf/web2c"
CXXFLAGS="-O2 -pipe"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FCFLAGS="-O2 -pipe"
FEATURES="assume-digests binpkg-logs config-protect-if-modified distlocks ebuild-locks fixlafiles merge-sync news parallel-fetch protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unknown-features-warn unmerge-logs unmerge-orphans userfetch"
FFLAGS="-O2 -pipe"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://distfiles.gentoo.org"
LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1 -Wl,--as-needed"
LINGUAS="en"
MAKEOPTS="-j5"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/"
PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --human-readable --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY=""
SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
USE="3dnow X Xaw3d a52 aac aalib acl acpi aim alsa amd64 ao apache2 apm audiofile avahi berkdb blas bluetooth branding bzip2 cairo calendar caps cdda cddb cdinstall cdparanoia cdr cgi clamav cli consolekit cracklib crypt css ctype cups curl cvs cxx dbi dbm dbus dbx dga directfb dri dts dv dvb dvd dvdr eds emboss encode enscript evo examples exif expat fam fastcgi fbcon ffmpeg firefox flac fontconfig foomaticdb fortran ftp gcj gdbm gif gimp glu gmp gnome gnuplot gnutls gphoto2 gpm graphviz gsl gsm gstreamer gtk gtkhtml guile gzip hal handbook hddtemp iconv icq icu idn ieee1394 imagemagick imlib innodb introspection iodbc ipv6 jabber java java6 javascript jbig jingle jpeg jpeg2k kde kontact lapack lcms ldap libcaca libedit libgda libnotify libwww lm_sensors lua lzma lzo mad maildir mikmod milter mime mmap mmx mng modules motif mozilla mp3 mp4 mpeg mpi mplayer msn mudflap multilib musepac mysql mysqli nas ncurses networkmanager nls nntp nptl nsplugin odbc offensive ofx ogg opengl openmp osc oscar oss pam pango pch pcntl pcre pdf perl php plasma plotutils png policykit portaudio posix postgres ppds pppd pulseaudio python qt3support qt4 quicktime raw rdesktop readline rss ruby samba sasl sdl semantic-desktop session sharedext sharedmem simplexml smp sndfile snmp soap sockets socks5 speex spell sqlite sqlite3 sse sse2 ssl startup-notification subversion suid svg symlink syslog sysvipc szip tcl tcpd theora threads tidy tiff timiditytk tokenizer truetype udev udisks unicode upower usb v4l v4l2 vcd vorbis wmf wxwidgets x264 xcb xcomposite xft xine xinerama xinetd xml xnlrpc xosd xv xvid yahoo zeroconf zlib" ALSA_CARDS="ali5451 als4000 atiixp atiixp-modem bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1x ens1370 ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 intel8x0m maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx via82xx-modem ymfpci" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="authn_core authz_core socache_shmcb unixd actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache cgi cgid dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" CALLIGRA_FEATURES="kexi words flow plan sheets stage tables krita karbon braindump" CAMERAS="ptp2" COLLECTD_PLUGINS="df interface irq load memory rrdtool swap syslog" ELIBC="glibc" GPSD_PROTOCOLS="ashtech aivdm earthmate evermore fv18 garmin garmintxt gpsclock itrax mtk3301 nmea ntrip navcom oceanserver oldstyle oncore rtcm104v2 rtcm104v3 sirf superstar2 timing tsip tripmate tnt ubx" INPUT_DEVICES="evdev" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" LIBREOFFICE_EXTENSIONS="presenter-console presenter-minimizer" LINGUAS="en" PHP_TARGETS="php5-3" PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_7 python3_2" RUBY_TARGETS="ruby18 ruby19" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="nvidia" XFCE_PLUGINS="brightness menu trash" XTABLES_ADDONS="quota2 psd pknock lscan length2 ipv4options ipset ipp2p iface geoip fuzzy condition tee tarpit sysrq steal rawnat logmark ipmark dhcpmac delude chaos account"
Unset: CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, INSTALL_MASK, LC_ALL, PORTAGE_BUNZIP2_COMMAND, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS, USE_PYTHON

bopper pulse #

[Featherfoot]

The problem was eventually resolved by emerging phonon-gstreamer and using system-settings to change the default Phonon Backend to GStreamer. If that doesn't show on your system emerge phonon-gstreamer.