Alsa, Esound, and Event sound troubles.

[Joshua Hansen <culthero culthero info>]

Okay. I've been trying to see if anyone knew how to actually fix this
problem or give a *good* work around for it.

The bottom line of the problem is this: event sounds just plain don't
work (which is especially annoying since I'm using GnomeICU). I have
them enabled in the control center. I know sound is working because XMMS
plays mp3s just fine (both through OSS and Esound). 

I have pretty much figured that this problem has a solution within
something Gnome related since I had this problem in Slackware 8 using
the default Gnome install, my own source install on Slack and now with
Gentoo Linux's source install. 

That's really all the detail on that matter. ESD is compiled *without*
ALSA support at the moment. (I'll get to that and see if the smart ones
know what's up since sound + Linux is a total mystery to me.) The only
other thing I can say is that the soundcard is PCI. A Hercules Muse XL
(Cmedia 8378 chip).

The other problem I have is with ALSA. When I complile ESD with ALSA
support here is the error I get when trying to run it:

audio_alsa: no cards found!Audio device open for 44.1Khz, stereo, 16bit
failed
Trying 44.1Khz, 8bit stereo.
audio_alsa: no cards found!Audio device open for 44.1Khz, stereo, 8bit
failed
Trying 48Khz, 16bit stereo.
audio_alsa: no cards found!Audio device open for 44.1Khz, stereo, 8bit
failed
Trying 22.05Khz, 8bit stereo.
audio_alsa: no cards found!Audio device open for 22.05Khz, stereo, 8bit
failed
Trying 44.1Khz, 16bit mono.
audio_alsa: no cards found!Audio device open for 44.1Khz, mono, 8bit
failed
Trying 22.05Khz, 8bit mono.
audio_alsa: no cards found!Audio device open for 22.05Khz, mono, 8bit
failed
Trying 11.025Khz, 8bit stereo.
audio_alsa: no cards found!Audio device open for 11.025Khz, stereo, 8bit
failed
Trying 11.025Khz, 8bit mono.
audio_alsa: no cards found!Audio device open for 11.025Khz, mono, 8bit
failed
Trying 8.192Khz, 8bit mono.
audio_alsa: no cards found!Audio device open for 8.192Khz, mono, 8bit
failed
Trying 8Khz, 8bit mono.
audio_alsa: no cards found!Sound device inadequate for Esound. Fatal.

The only solution that was presented online (that I could find) was to
compile ESD without ALSA support, which I did. The only thing that let
me do was get ESD running so XMMS could use it. The event sounds still
don't work.

Anyone had this problem before or know where I can find some answers?
I'm stumped. Again, I know Linux pretty well for server usage, but I've
never put a sound card in a server.

Versions:

Gentoo Linux (rc6)
Esound - 0.2.23
ALSA - 0.5.11
Gnome - 1.4 (I guess)
XFree86 - 4.1
Kernel - 2.4.16

Sound Card - Hercules Muse XL (Cmedia 8378, cmpci.o)
Intel BX Chipset (i686)

If this is any help I get a segmentation fault sometimes when I tinker
around in the control center under the sound settings. If I need to add
more detail or there is something else missing here I'll be happy to
provide it.

Joshua