sound woes... solved!

    Working on computers all day long as a day job, then coming home to 
work on my own computer is no fun.  Especially after RTFM-ing and 
G-ingMAO on this particular problem for over 2 weeks.  But I am a 
hacker, and I WILL WIN.
    The problem initially, was playing midi music through Rosegarden (a 
music editing program).  I could do this before with my old computer and 
my old SoundBlaster card, but no luck with the new computer and onboard 
super-wham-o-dyne HD sound chip.  So.. I decided to put in my old 
SoundBlaster card and see what happens.  Good news, the system detected 
the archaic card, and after much configuration on the software side, I 
got it to play!  Bad news... every time I reboot, the onboard sound chip 
comes up as the default sound device.
    Now... The sound devices are managed by "ALSA" (/Advanced Linux 
Sound Architecture), and are detected by udev when the system boots up.  
You configure ALSA with the wonderful command "alsaconf".   After 
exiting, it saves your configuration in the //etc/modprobe.d/sound.conf 
file.  After running alsaconf, you are invited to run alsamixer set the 
default device and to set the sound levels.  Then you test them out with 
the command "aplay -vv file.wav".   But... after rebooting... guess 
what... the onboard is again the default device... arrrgghhh!
    Tonight I re-read this url: 
//http://wiki.linuxaudio.org/faq/start?redirect=1 and noticed something 
about the /etc/modprobe.d/backlist.conf file.  This file tells udev and 
ALSA not to load specific drivers for certain hardware.  I noticed that 
the driver for my legacy SoundBlaster card was in this file.  I 
commented it out, rebooted and now my SoundBlaster card comes up as the 
default sound card, and all is well.

I hope this post helps someone with future woes...


Rob.