Dear Reader! I am using SuSE 9.0 pro out of the box, I have an onboard soundchip and the Hoontech DSP 24 Value soundcard. Problem: When I am using recording software ("audacity" or "snd") the sound is being recorded. However, when playing back and the playback is finished (either by pressing stop or the sound file is simply finished) the programs are crashing (they close). After this, there is no sound at all! And I could not get it back, even by playing around with YaST. Opening the recording software and trying to play back results then in an immediate crash. The program "snd" gave me fortunately at least this message: open read /dev/dsp0: Device or resource busy [audio.c[1956] linux_audio_open_with_error] With my limited knowledge in Linux I could only get around by rebooting the computer. During the shutdown the screen showed me the following information (I give just an excerpt): snd-mixer: Device or resource busy ... snd-* Device or resource busy failed After rebooting the sound was there. (Just a remark: after crashing the audio it is not possible to restart the X-server by "ctrl-alt-backspace". The computer hangs, no GUI, and also to switch to any console is of no use. I only could brutally switch off the computer.) Also switching off the "arts" was of no use ... What is the reason that the device is busy? And how can I solve this problem? Thanks for any hints and comments Cordially Thomas