After googling and reading for several hours last nite, I was still unable to find a solution to this, so I decided to give up and just ask. I am trying to get Ardour, Jack and my Delta 1010 working on Ubuntu Dapper Flight 4, but I wonder if I am missing something from alsa. There is also an onboard C-Media sound chip. I can get sound from the C-Media chip, but the only time I hear a sound from the Delta card is when the Ubuntu login screen appears, and only after a reboot. XMMS will play thru the C-Media, but when I try to change to the Delta card, I get the "couldn't open audio" error message. The snd_ice1712 module is loaded. I tried disabling the C-Media chip in the BIOS, but Ubuntu still recognizes and uses it. Here is what happens when I try to run alsamixer or alsa.conf as root: # alsamixer ALSA lib confmisc.c:1107:(snd_func_refer) Unable to find definition 'defaults.ctl.card' ALSA lib conf.c:3493:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory ALSA lib confmisc.c:242:(snd_func_getenv) error evaluating default ALSA lib conf.c:3493:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_getenv returned error: No such file or directory ALSA lib conf.c:3962:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory ALSA lib control.c:817:(snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL default alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such file or directory # /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf bash: /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf: Permission denied I have tried changing permissions, finally setting /dev/dsp, /dev/mixer and /dev/snd/* to 777. I have alsa-base, alsa-utils and alsa-tools installed. I may not have something alsa needs, but additionally getting a "permission denied" from alsa.conf as root seems to indicate that the file is being used, although I don't know by what. I would really appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction with this. Thanks. Ruben