I'd probably stick to Windows audio, but I desire to combine my love of hacking with my love of music. I figure it's probably easier to learn audio on Linux than to learn to hack (and interface that with audio) on Windows.
Anyway, hppnq:
My error messages when I run "aplay -vv [some wav file]" as a non-root user
ALSA lib confmisc.c:768
parse_card) cannot find card '0'
ALSA lib conf.c:3513
_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:392
snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
ALSA lib conf.c:3513
_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1251
snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
ALSA lib conf.c:3513
_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib conf.c:3985
snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib pcm.c:2144
snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default
aplay: main:564: audio open error: No such file or directory
when I ran lsof as root, I got no output. When I ran it as non-root, I got a lot of permission denied errors (even after I changed the permissions... strange)
lsmod gave me
snd_intel8x0 30557 1
snd_ac97_codec 92257 1 snd_intel8x0
ac97_bus 5825 1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_seq_dummy 6853 0
snd_seq_oss 29633 0
snd_seq_midi_event 9921 1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq 44913 5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device 9933 3 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq
snd_pcm_oss 37441 0
snd_mixer_oss 16577 2 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm 61637 3 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer 21065 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd 44517 9 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore 9633 2 snd
snd_page_alloc 11337 2 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm
Most of my kernel settings should be pretty close to Fedora 8 defaults.
cat /proc... etc. gave me
0 [I82801CAICH3 ]: ICH - Intel 82801CA-ICH3
Intel 82801CA-ICH3 with CS4299 at irq 11
Again thanks for your help.