noisy soundcards in linux, etc

[To: cmdist]

There were some questions earlier about soundcards in
Linux related mainly to the background noise; I recently
got a linux system going with a Soundblaster 64 and
after goofing around with the sound drivers, found
that I could reduce the noise a lot by turning off
the various "mixer" inputs, and turning the various
"outputs" up to full volume -- for some reason OSS
defaults in this regard look like random numbers.
See the new clm functions mic-volume and line-volume,
and the smarter volume (and in snd, the function
clear-inputs).  Also the function describe-soundcard.
I'd be very interested in others' experience with
these settings.

Other changes since my last general news report:
power-envs in clm (a suggestion of Anders Vinjar),
much work on the linux sound stuff (dax, record, etc),
pause/continue playback in Snd.