Comment 12 for bug 311853

I'm having the same issue in Karmic as well.
Sound pops and cuts out while playing Warzone 2100, Glest, and my purchased copy of X3 Reunion.
Sound seems to work okay in other applications.
Sound Card Realtek ALC889A connected to my home receiver via Optical S/PDIF.

Tried turning off Power saving by editing /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
options snd-hda-intel power_save=0 power_save_controller=N
Problem still continues.