Hello Keith,
I never thought of Alsa and restarting it. I just used the sound as SuSE set it up on installation. Must read the manual about Alsa.
I forgot to say that there is a third alternative, you can use the commercial OSS. I got a license for abt $30. http://www.opensound.com/ They have driver for various sond cards, and the driver for AC97 sound with resampling feature too. Hannu is a very helpfull OM, he answered via mail immediately and I got the driver working. His call is OH2GLH and he is very interested in PSK and other soundmodes. You can try the free evalution version, which is running for 30 minutes. and than you have to restart the sound. 73 Wolf, DL2WRJ -- All power corrupts, but we need electricity. (/usr/games/fortunes)