creating /dev/dsp in a standard way

[Dan Hitt <dan.hitt@gmail.com>]

I'm trying out different sound editors on debian 6.0.4 ("squeeze").

Some of them work fine right out of the box (mhwaveedit
and kwave) and some won't play sound (gnusound and snd).

(So no matter what, i know that hardware shouldn't be an
issue since i can play sound from some software without
any issues.)

All of these come from
    sudo apt-get install PACKAGE_NAME

I believe that gnusound and snd fail because they are
trying to use /dev/dsp, which does not exist on my system.

Now . . . it seems like /dev/dsp would or should be created
for any package which needs it --- so i think i should file
a bug about this (but not sure exactly where).

But maybe not, maybe there is some standard step
i should be taking to guarantee that /dev/dsp gets created.

If so, what would that step be?

Thanks in advance for any help (and obviously i'm quite
a neophyte here, so i appreciate any suggestions).

dan