kernel vs. alsa?

[Cheryl Homiak]

As much as i'm hating trying to get all these mixer setting straight, I didn't
at all like the kernel drivers for my sblive. they made my sblive sound like a
cheap (cheap, not inexpensive) card, maybe because I wasn't using a mixer that
could handle them. on the other hand, I very much liked the oss package I
bought; I'm only trying to do alsa because I want to be on the speakfreely
reflector.
as for your trplayer program, there is probably a setting eluding you or
something; even with the problems i am having with my mixer settings for
recording, trplayer works fine with my .wav files.
However, I will say that for my soundblaster the kernel support was just fine; I
couldn't have been happier, so it depends on your card whether you would be
happywith the kernel support.