I am using the KDE desktop. I changed the settings of
the sound server
like you said. Snd still freezes, whereas your ruby scripts runs fine
without freezing.
I just tested it, and the latest version indeed freezes the desktop in
my computer when opening the recorder window. I tried on a couple of
other computers (using the same soundcard) and it did not freeze! (I
initially thought this was going to be an alsa programming problem with
your particular soundcard). Very strange...
I managed to get control of the desktop by switching to a text console
and killing -9 the snd processs.
-- Fernando