> Before pulseaudio only one application could access the sound card. That's only true if the sound card has no hardware mixing support (or very limited number

> Before pulseaudio only one application could access the sound card. That's only true if the sound card has no hardware mixing support (or very limited number of streams, where it would suddenly break after a certain number of applications) _and_ the alsa setup didn't include dmix (software mixing). Not sure what problems you had with alsamixer, for me it always worked (but maybe I never tried anything sufficiently fancy for it to break). But I am with the previous poster on this. I have had way more problems with pulseaudio than without. Also it's not only alsa drivers that can be at fault here, but pulseaudio also consults other hardware databases which alsa does not use, which can contain mistakes that can make pulseaudio unusable (had that issue not even a month ago with an external usb sound card).