As far as I know, everything was just as it had been prior to the update.. I made no system changes and my sound (everywhere else anyhow) appears to be functioning normally. I only blame the update so definitely because I dropped out of play to eat, but left Steam open.. when I returned, Counter Strike had updated. I thought, "Awesome.. back to it." clicked to launch and here we are. I am installing ubuntu 10.10 on this machine tonight and will be trying everything fresh afterward. Then I'll probably be like [Embarassed] "workin fine, sorry.." Be back tomorrow.