hi and thanks for the help so far!, the hdsp module is loaded /sbin/lsmod: snd-hdsp 46732 0 (autoclean) cat /proc/asound/cards 0 [default ]: H-DSP - Hammerfall DSP RME Hammerfall DSP + Multiface at 0xfeae0000, irq 5 the motherboards intel sound chip has now disappeared but thats ok... i ran alsaconf again and now and everything seems a lot healthier the hdsploader works (the red Host light is now off) as does hdspconf and hdspmixer so everything looks fine but when i start pd it hangs for about 20 seconds and then outputs the following errors, then quits. input channels = 2, output channels = 2 device name hw:0; channels in 2, out 2 audio buffer set to 50 opening sound input... using non-interleaved audio input Sample width set to 4 bytes ALSA: set input channels to 14 ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:324:(snd_pcm_hw_hw_params) SNDRV_PCM_IOCTL_HW_PARAMS failed: Device or resource busy snd_pcm_hw_params (input): Device or resource busy pd: pcm.c:4887: snd_pcm_sw_params_current: Assertion `pcm->setup' failed. Pd: signal 6 socket receive error: Connection reset by peer (104) Aborted sorry about this! rob