Hans Fugal:
ALSA. If you want to tie yourself to KDE and endless misery, try artsd,
but I warned you.
Hmmm, I think the alsa api is a bit huge/complicated. I would never
reccomend doing alsa directly, and I think it was a very bad advice
actually. Check out portaudio, sndlib or jack instead, which provides
easier interface to the soundcard than alsa, and works on top of alsa (and
others).
--