[LAU] hdspmixer: HwDep ioctl failed. Metering stopped

Hello, I'm trying to help my friend with his RME multiface and ubuntu linux. When we run hdspmixer we get this output: HDSPMixer 1.6 - Copyright (C) 2003 Thomas Charbonnel <thomas(a)undata.org> This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY HDSPMixer is free software, see the file COPYING for details Looking for HDSP cards : Card 0 : RME Hammerfall DSP + Multiface at 0xfdde0000, irq 17 Multiface found ! 1 Hammerfall DSP card found. Initializing default presets HwDep ioctl failed. Metering stopped We can still use the mixer, route, etc. but metering doesn't work [we don't see any graphical representation of the audio]. hdspconf repeatedly gives us this output: Hwdep ioctl error on card hw:0. We can route audio with jack, output audio with jack, and also output audio with oss, but apps using alsa don't seem to be working.. when I run aplay on a file I get this output: jesse@ubuntu:/lib/firmware$ aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Side_Right.wav Playing WAVE '/usr/share/sounds/alsa/Side_Right.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 48000 Hz, Mono ALSA lib pcm_pulse.c:625:(pulse_prepare) PulseAudio: Unable to create stream: Invalid argument aplay: set_params:1015: Unable to install hw params: ACCESS: RW_INTERLEAVED FORMAT: S16_LE SUBFORMAT: STD SAMPLE_BITS: 16 FRAME_BITS: 16 CHANNELS: 1 RATE: 48000 PERIOD_TIME: 125000 PERIOD_SIZE: 6000 PERIOD_BYTES: 12000 PERIODS: 4 BUFFER_TIME: 500000 BUFFER_SIZE: 24000 BUFFER_BYTES: 48000 TICK_TIME: [0 0] We've found some open threads in some bug trackers about this problem but no resolutions for this problem. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks, Alex