espeakup and sound cards?

[Kyle]

My experience with pulseaudio on Arch has been quite a bit better. It's 
most likely due to the audio systems handling each sound card 
differently, which is indeed a mess. My problem is that especially with 
Alsa, my system seems to be muted rather than a sane volume being set. 
This doesn't appear to be a problem with my onboard device, since the 
talking installer came up right away, albeit at a rather low volume. It 
always happens, however, on my Soundblaster Live Value, which always 
starts muted, even when sane volumes are supposed to be set, such as in 
Vinux and Ubuntu.
~Kyle