[linux-audio-user] bad lag with audiophile 2496

Hi all. I just joined the list, and I figured I would unload my problems on all of you, since you seem so nice form reading the archives :-) I have been using linux for years, but not ALSA. I just bought a new computer with an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 sound card in hopes of doing a little bit of recording, but I seem to have run into a problem just getting my base system configured Whenever I do something that uses sound, I get about a 3 second delay before the sound plays. Once the audio has started playing then everything is fine until it stops. I then get the delay again the next time I try to play a sound. This is a little bit inconvienient when I try to start rhythmbox and I wait for the music to start, rather annoying when desktop "beeps and dings" are delayed until after the action has occurred, and downright freakish when I try a flash animation like on homestarrunner.com. By way of example, the main page of that site contains a bunch of buttons that trigger animations and sound effects as you mouse over them. When I mouse over the first button, the animation starts but then halts while waiting for the sound effect. If I keep my cursor there, 3 seconds later the sound plays and the animation continues, and then if I mouse to the next button I must wait again. If I move my cursor to the next button while the sound fromt he first one is still playing, I get the sound effect immediately, and as long as I don't let the audio stop, every thing is fine. Has anyone seen something like this, or have any possible suggestions? I google for combinations of ice1712, envy24, lag, buffer alsa, and others but could not get any resonable results. I am using Fedora Core 1 with the 2.4.22 kernel form ATrpms and alsa 1.0.2 (also from ATrpms). I have tried disabling esd, but it doesn't make a difference. I don't have my modules.conf right now, but it is very stock (configured with alsaconf) other than a couple of lines I added to prevent searching for a second sound card (was printing messages to /var/log/messages about being able to load module for snd-slot-1 - this didn't fix my problem ;-). My system is an Athlon XP 2500+ (barton) with NForce2 ultra400, 1 gig of RAM (dual-channel), GeforceFX 5200 and Maxtor 160G sata (SiI3112 controller). Onboard AC97 audio is disabled in the BIOS. Any help would be appreciated.