If xmms is hanging under GNOME, make sure you have xmms's esd output plugin selected, otherwise xmms and esd may contend for the audio device. For those of you moving from ALSA 0.5 to ALSA 0.9, you may have to delete your /etc/asound.conf file. If you are using gamix, you may need to get version 1.99 and you should delete your ~/.gamix directory. The reason is that the names of the controls have changed. Thomas