Speaking of .asoundrc, I had set up my like so (which predictably no longer works, even though my usb card is still at index 0): pcm.!default { type plug slave.pcm "softvol" #make use of softvol } pcm.softvol { type softvol slave { pcm "dmix" #redirect the output to dmix (instead of "hw:0,0") } control { name "PCM" #override the PCM slider to set the softvol volume level globally card 0 } } I doubt this would cause a mess up (even so, even *that* is no longer working, my soundcard ignores any changes made by alsamixer). At this point, would I guess there's some pulseaudio weirdness happening? Any ideas how I can use alsa straight up, unless I've somehow been using a pulseaudio-alsa wrapper this entire time. To my mind, it makes absolutely no sense why stuff would be playing out of Card 1, and not Card 0. Or at least why that has suddenly changed to be the default with this upgrade. Andrew.