When you are using aplay or VLC with ALSA output, you are bypassing pulseaudio and sending sound to ALSA's software mixer (dmix), which resamples to 48kHz before sending the audio to your card.
When you use other programs, they use pulseaudio output by default, which doesn't resample 44.1kHz audio in its default configuration, so 44.1kHz audio is sent to your card. Creative cards resample to 48kHz in hardware, and apparently, your card's hardware mixer is either defective or picking up motherboard noise.
The best way around this would be to make pulse resample to 48kHz, so open up the configuration file for editing:
Code:
gksu gedit /etc/pulse/daemon.conf
Change this line:
Code:
; default-sample-rate = 44100
to:
Code:
default-sample-rate = 48000
Save. Quit. Close all apps using audio and reboot or just restart pulse:
Code:
sudo pulseaudio --kill && sudo pulseaudio --start
If that works and you want all apps to use pulse, change your asouond.conf like so: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1455816
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