I updated to Intrepid-beta, and I am hoping that in the next few days when the distro is complete, this will go away. I will report it anyways because this has been a problem for a few weeks now, and no fix has been issued.
When I start up the computer (Dell Inspiron 1525) the sound works fine. Mute works. However, once a flash application is opened (last.fm applet for example), when I mute, I hear loud static. I have gone into the Gnome ALSA mixer and tried to mute all microphone features, no fix. I have no idea what to try at this point. Its clear (I think) that this is a flash problem. Also, if I have a flash application opened and I go into hibernation, upon coming out, the sound is then killed. I have to ctrl-alt-backspace and restart X in order to restore the sound. Again, this only happens when I have used flash.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
I have similar experiences on the defenite version of Intrepid. I use ALSA with my Dell Vostro 1500 which has an Intel sound card. In my experience this is not limited to flash, I have these issues with Rhythmbox as well, I guess it is related to ALSA.
Whenever I use the soft key of my laptop to mute, when I use the Volume Down soft key until sound is off I will hear static.
When I use the volume control icon in Ubuntu I can click Mute without any problems, but when I open Sound Control and use the PCM fader and fade it to 0% or mute the PCM channel I will also hear static.
I found out when there is no sound playing, I can mute without hearing static. If I then start in a sound, for instance a song in Rhythmbox, I will hear static.