Finally got RC3 of Alsa to build and still the same

[Adam Myrow]

Wait a second.  Are you saying you had RC3 and RC1 running concurrently?
Yes, I had the right modules loading.  That wasn't the problem.  Again and
again, I hear glowing reports using an SB Live.  It sounds as if the Live
is a very popular card, and thus the driver is well tested.  I had Alsa
set up both in rc.modules and modules.conf.  Both ways produce similar
results.  Here is what my rc.modules for Alsa contained.

#Load Alsa drivers.
/sbin/modprobe snd-sbawe
/sbin/modprobe snd-seq-midi
/sbin/modprobe snd-pcm-oss
/sbin/modprobe snd-seq-oss

Here is my /etc/modules.conf I used which let Alsa load and unload on the
fly.  It differs a bit from the example in that I used a feature called
post-install to run commands after loading the modules since the settings
always go back to muted when the modules unload and reload.  The sfxload
command is a utility to enable Midi support with the AWE cards, although I
seldom need it, it is good to have around.

 alias char-major-116 snd
alias snd-card-0 snd-sbawe
post-install snd-card-0 /usr/sbin/alsactl restore
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
post-install sound-service-0-1 /usr/local/bin/sfxload synthgs
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss