It was a problem until Pulseaudio became good -- to my experience, that happened around the 2.0 release. And in a technical sense, it's still a problem, since A

It was a problem until Pulseaudio became good -- to my experience, that happened around the 2.0 release. And in a technical sense, it's still a problem, since ALSA contains so much useless complexity now that something like PA finally exists.