I've been using KDE as my Linux desktop environment for over half a year now, and I've discovered a pattern. In particular, if I touch any of the sound settings in the Control Center, my entire computer crashes. If I log out and back in, my entire computer crashes. If I touch a window the wrong way, my entire computer crashes. It was just getting more and more unstable, and I was getting sick of it. So I finally decided to switch back to the GNOME desktop environment. In a couple of hours, I managed to get it set up almost exactly like my old KDE setup (in fact, I was able to tweak it more to my liking), and this time it seems perfectly stable and the sound system just works. Also, WINE seems to perform better now: Internet Explorer now starts up almost instantly and Internet Explorer 3.0 works again. So I'm happy with the change.

I've never had any trouble with sound and kde personally, but if GNOME works for you, by all means use it. Choice is the spirit of open source.