Removed static in Kubuntu
Well, that was easy - into trouble easily, got out of it even more easily.
I was unhappy to find that I could not record via a microphone into Kubuntu 8.04 LTS (hardy). Try as I may, following multiple tutorials and how-tos from Ubuntu Forums and in the Community Ubuntu Documentation, I could not get the microphone input to work.
And then it happened. I made my existing sound setup worse. All of a sudden, the sound had heavy static.
Just great.
I let it fester for a few months, and then searched around for some advice. Came upon SoundTroubleshooting, and followed the directions for reinstalling all my settings under Manual Installation > Refreshing/Reinstalling the drivers. Followed it, even rebooted, but it did not work.
Opened up KMix, played with the Switches panel, and deactivated Mic Boost (+20db).
Boom! No more static.
That probably deserves a face-palm, but there are so many settings that I changed...