Hillel wrote: It looks as though this part of your message got answered, so... The answer to this question is bound up in some relatively uninteresting and obvious Linux history. The situation has changed recently, and there is now the possibility of ALSA providing software multiplexing. The problem is that this software mixing is not automatic or transparent to the user, it requires the composition of a small script (called .asoundrc), less long than this email but of apparently such awesome complexity that normal users faint with horror at the prospect. Sorry, I was being silly, but it's the silly truth. The necessary .asoundrc file is hardly a difficult thing to write, but I'll still agree with the naive user: it's the sort of thing that can and should be handled transparently by ALSA during system configuration. Some kind of default .asoundrc could be autogenerated for chipsets that don't support hardware mixing, perhaps ? Well, history again: ALSA has only recently been adopted as the kernel sound system, and many of its features remain hidden to the average user. Hopefully we'll see more of those features become more easily available to users, without the need for user-written scripts. Best, dp