Wow! I would like to thank everyone for replying so quickly and so well. These are the quickest replies I have ever received. Anyway, I checked my ALSA base and Plugins and they are both new enough versions, so I am pretty sure I have the Pulse plugin. When I use aplay with /.asoundrc, regardless of whether the Pulseaudio server is running I get the following error. Paul:/home/paul# aplay -D pulse /usr/share/sounds/startup3.wav ALSA lib pcm.c:2143:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM pulse aplay: main:550: audio open error: No such file or directory However, out of curiosity I copied ./asoundrc to /etc/asound.conf, then tried aplay with Pulseaudio running and it worked, but if Pulseaudio is not running, I recieve the following error message. Paul:/home/paul# aplay -D pulse /usr/share/sounds/startup3.wav *** PULSEAUDIO: Unable to connect: Connection refused aplay: main:550: audio open error: Connection refused I also get this error message if I stop and then start the message again. So, the aplay command only works using /etc/asound.conf and when I first start the computer. (Pulseaudio automatically starts too.) I always believed my soundcard was capable of hardware mixing, but it is possible that I have been living a lie. Is there anyway I can find out for sure? I have a Guillemot Hercules Gamesurround Muse XL, if that helps. Let's say that I don't have hardware mixing and I have to use dmix. How would I set up ALSA/dmix/Pulseaudio for maximum speed to solve any type of stuttering problems, etc. Thanks in advance.