Hi all. I think that I'm going to stick to the lilo append=speakup_synth=none. Its kind of annoying, but I guess its a temporary osllution till I get another hardware synth. In terms of the alsa thing and viavoice and the other software synths, I won't be able to play audio or anything, and I often listen to stuff when I'm doing other things such as searching for google. Thanks everyone for the suggestions, I'll definitely keep them in mind.
