Sound in system and Rhythmbox is scratchy and skips

Two problems. Since a few hours ago, the sound on my system and in Rhythmbox has been *extremely* scratchy. I'm playing mp3 files through Rhythmbox, and in the system, the terminal beep is also quite scratchy. However, the scratches aren't present in Totem. I'm just using the standard ALSA configuration, I believe, since I don't remember installing anything special to make my sound work.
I thought it might have been a simultaneous playback issue, because although I don't *play* sound in multiple apps at once, I often have several apps that utilise sound open (e.g. Totem, Rhythmbox, etc.) I changed my /etc/asound.conf file to this, based on the wiki. This is my /etc/asound.conf:
# Use PulseAudio by default
#pcm.!default {
# type pulse
# fallback "sysdefault"
# hint {
# show on
# description "Default ALSA Output (currently PulseAudio Sound Server)"
#ctl.!default {
# type pulse
# fallback "sysdefault"
# vim:set ft=alsaconf:
I thought maybe the update today broke this, but I don't know how to check which packages were updated today using pacman (or perhaps looking at modification times on files in /var/lib)?
The second problem is my sound skipping, in every application. This has been happening for several days. I checked the wiki and found that this problem can occur with a speaker system not being configured properly by the system, so I opened alsamixer to check the levels, as shown: Master (43), Headphones (100), Speaker (96), PCM (99), and Mic/Micboost, S/PDIF, and Beep are all muted. However, I still get skipping and scratchy noises even if I use headphones or my laptops normal speakers, without the speaker system plugged into the 3.5mm.
My audio controller is the built-in Intel device in my Lenovo SL510:
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
Subsystem: Lenovo Device 20f2
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 47
Memory at f2a00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
Any ideas for what I can check to figure this out?
Last edited by pythonscript (2012-07-03 02:17:48)

Thanks Bengt and Chris,
I have all of the updates for all of the relevant applications,ie iMovie 6.0.2 and QuickTimePro 7.1.
I am aware of the problems that using the wrong sound format can cause and never use the 12khz setting.
I do not think it is a hardware problem, such as external HDs or other externals, because, I can fire up FCP and capture the same clips from my camera with no change other than quitting iMovie and booting FCP and the sound is perfect.
Thank you both for your input, I am really stumped here. I have been doing video on my Macs with since the early 90's when a 2gigabyte HD cost me over $2500 Australian and never had anything like this.
Back in those days the biggest problem was getting anything captured at all, perhaps I have become lazy and accustomed to things "just working".

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*     SimpleAudioRecorder.java
*     This file is part of jsresources.org
* Copyright (c) 1999 - 2003 by Matthias Pfisterer
* All rights reserved.
* Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
* modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
* are met:
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|<---            this code is formatted to fit into 80 columns             --->|
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