I'm sending this somewhat blindly, due to messages from the nightly log summary. I'm just cut/pasting what is there. It says "report this to alsa developers," but it would have been kinda cool if somebody would have included a definite address to which such a report should be sent.

(First try, I sent this to alsa-devel@sourceforge. Got a bounce about the list having moved. Resending as indicated. No, I'm not subscribing to the list. Sorry, but I'm offering a bug report per request, not trying to engage in general devel conversation on this topic.)

Hardware is a Toshiba Satellite P205 series, with this sound hardware:

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03) Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device ff00 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 22 Memory at f8500000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2 Capabilities: [60] MSI: Mask- 64bit+ Count=1/1 Enable- Capabilities: [70] Express Root Complex Integrated Endpoint, MSI 00 Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel <?> Capabilities: [130] Root Complex Link <?> Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

This is Fedora11, 2.6.29.5-191.fc11.i686.PAE (32-bit, obviously).

Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: snd_pcm_delay() returned a value that is exceptionally large: 1480877280 bytes (8394995 ms). Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: Most likely this is a bug in the ALSA driver 'snd_hda_intel'. Please report this issue to the ALSA developers. Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: snd_pcm_dump(): Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: Soft volume PCM Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: Control: PCM Playback Volume Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: min_dB: -51 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: max_dB: 0 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: resolution: 256 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: Its setup is: Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: stream : CAPTURE Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: access : MMAP_INTERLEAVED Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: format : S16_LE Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: subformat : STD Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: channels : 2 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: rate : 44100 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: exact rate : 44100 (44100/1) Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: msbits : 16 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: buffer_size : 88192 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: period_size : 44096 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: period_time : 999909 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: tstamp_mode : ENABLE Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: period_step : 1 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: avail_min : 87310 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: period_event : 0 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: start_threshold : -1 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: stop_threshold : 1444937728 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: silence_threshold: 0 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: silence_size : 0 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: boundary : 1444937728 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: Slave: Hardware PCM card 0 'HDA Intel' device 0 subdevice 0 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: Its setup is: Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: stream : CAPTURE Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: access : MMAP_INTERLEAVED Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: format : S16_LE Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: subformat : STD Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: channels : 2 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: rate : 44100 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: exact rate : 44100 (44100/1) Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: msbits : 16 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: buffer_size : 88192 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: period_size : 44096 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: period_time : 999909 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: tstamp_mode : ENABLE Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: period_step : 1 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: avail_min : 87310 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: period_event : 0 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: start_threshold : -1 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: stop_threshold : 1444937728 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: silence_threshold: 0 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: silence_size : 0 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: boundary : 1444937728 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: appl_ptr : 932488 Jul 4 09:20:35 awol pulseaudio[2835]: alsa-util.c: hw_ptr : 1444893632 Jul 4 09:20:40 awol pulseaudio[2835]: ratelimit.c: 1106 events suppressed Jul 4 09:20:45 awol pulseaudio[2835]: cpulimit.c: Received request to terminate due to CPU overload. Jul 4 09:20:47 awol pulseaudio[2835]: memblock.c: Memory pool destroyed but not all memory blocks freed! 236 remain. Jul 4 09:26:13 awol pulseaudio[17025]: alsa-sink.c: Increasing minimal latency to 1.00 ms Jul 4 09:26:13 awol pulseaudio[17025]: alsa-sink.c: Increasing minimal latency to 2.00 ms Jul 4 09:36:02 awol pulseaudio[17025]: alsa-source.c: Increasing minimal latency to 1.00 ms Jul 4 09:36:02 awol pulseaudio[17025]: alsa-source.c: Increasing minimal latency to 2.00 ms Jul 4 09:36:03 awol pulseaudio[17025]: alsa-source.c: Increasing minimal latency to 4.00 ms Jul 4 09:36:08 awol pulseaudio[17025]: alsa-source.c: Increasing minimal latency to 8.00 ms Jul 4 09:36:09 awol pulseaudio[17025]: alsa-source.c: Increasing minimal latency to 16.00 ms Jul 4 09:36:11 awol pulseaudio[17025]: alsa-source.c: Increasing minimal latency to 26.00 ms Jul 4 09:36:12 awol pulseaudio[17025]: alsa-source.c: Increasing wakeup watermark to 15.99 ms Jul 4 09:36:14 awol pulseaudio[17025]: alsa-source.c: Increasing minimal latency to 36.00 ms Jul 4 09:36:26 awol pulseaudio[17025]: alsa-source.c: Increasing wakeup watermark to 25.99 ms Jul 4 09:36:33 awol pulseaudio[17025]: alsa-source.c: Increasing minimal latency to 46.00 ms Jul 4 09:36:44 awol pulseaudio[17025]: alsa-source.c: Increasing wakeup watermark to 35.99 ms Jul 4 09:38:48 awol pulseaudio[17025]: alsa-source.c: Increasing minimal latency to 56.00 ms