[ Thanks to Sensei for this link.
]
“This tutorial is specifically tailored towards installing
ASLA and getting it configured for the Yamaha DS-XG card, however
many of the concepts involved in ALSA’s installation the
configuration are similar for most sound cards. I will attempt,
whenever possible, to leave some notes to help users of other cards
to properly setup ALSA for their cards as well. This tutorial is
meant to supplement, not replace, ALSA’s own documentation
files.“
“ASLA stands for Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, and was
developed as a method of modularizing and standardizing sound for
Linux. If your Linux distribution already supports your sound card,
then you don’t need ALSA. Those of us with Yamaha DS-XG cards have
been unable to produce sound in Linux for a long time, because
Yamaha has been slow to release the necessary information needed to
develop drivers for the DS- XG. The only solution up until now was
a retail driver package known as OSS. With the release of ALSA
v0.5.8a, the XG is now supported, and in the “open source”
format.”