could the problem not be my sound card.  But my Hitachi DVD rom drive??
i've noticed other problems with this drive in Linux.. when i used to
use Xroast for burning CD's the program would not recognize the DVD rom
as a read device.  So i could not burn from my DVD rom directly to my
Yamaha burner.  and when i do a 
CDRECORD -SCANBUS  there is no device ID for my DVD rom drive.  is there
another command i can do to find out the address for my DVD rom drive

currently it is 

/dev/cdrom
/dev/dvd

or the media versions of these

i can access it to get files off of a CD but i cannot use it to play
music. or DVD's . 

thanks again for your help

jw