I'd like to make a suggestion for Pulseaudio - programmable dead time before uncorking a source when the output is SPDIF or HDMI. Justification: I have my computer tied to a 5.1 receiver via SPDIF. When I start playing music in applications such as Audacious, the first half second of audio is lost as the stereo has to detect the data stream starting, work out the encoding, and then start decoding. If I could tell Pulse to insert some "dead air" to allow things to sync up first, then start playing, this would be eliminated.
