Short version: Have an Audiofire8, and it works great through FFADO but only with Jack. Jack is cool, but how do I get my normal system sounds (like from Firefox, etc...) out of it? Alsa seems not to be present at all. Did I choose badly? Can I ever get normal ALSA programs to see my Audiofire 8? Thanks, Toby Saga: I ordered a refurb box from Fry's in US. 8 Gig Ram, 1TB Hd, four core AMD Phenom, +extras $600. How could I refuse? Excitedly opening the box upon arrival I noticed that there was no PCI slot on the board whatsoever. So I go to the net. At that time there were only purely consumer type PCI-e sound boards, and I gave up on that. I had good luck with my USB 1.0 Tascam US-122 with linux, so without diligently checking compatibility, I ordered the US-144mkII; I need RCS S/PDIF I/O. A brief search after receiving the unit told me that I was lame, and should be ashamed to call myself a Linux user due to my lack of research before ordering. So I look around, and decide on an Echo again. This time an Audiofire8. I wanted the 4, but found the 8 on Craigslist for $300 flat. Seems I could not pass that up. I had done at least cursory research this time, and was indeed able to get the unit working properly through FFADO, but apparently only through Jackd. That's pretty cool for Ardour, but I can't even get Audacity or alsaplayer to use jack. Plus, how will I ever get Firefox, or other possibly non-jack aware programs to play through jack? I don't seem to have any alsa devices, even though the unit works great with Ardour. I suppose I could just dedicate another mixer blade to the onboard sound card (hear Simpson's shudder: Ughghghghghghhhhhhhhh). I seem to always be chasing rainbows. I remember when Alsa first came out. I thought it looked really neat, but not much used it at first. Then they had OSS emu, etc, but it took a long time for ALSA to win the audio war, and then another long time before it was second nature to me, and everything started to support it, and now, even oss emu seems a thing of the past. /dev/dsp? what's that? Now, with Jack, it seems that I am on another loop of this treadmill. Thanks, Tobiah