dmix issue with Audigy 2 (was Did ESD sound get very bad with the last update for anyone else?)

[Caerie Houchins]

>> Since the last update I've found that my sound coming through ESD is 
>> very crackly and bad.  ALSA seems just fine and when I play anything 
>> through aplay it sounds perfect.
>>
>> It is possible that I've just not noticed the sound being this bad 
>> before, but I'm fairly certain I would have.  GAIM's receive wav has 
>> always been annoying, but now it sounds like its being dragged 
>> accross a cheese grator :)  Same with anything using sound via 
>> Firefox and the flash plugin.  I did read the previous thread on ESD 
>> sound being bad on the list here, but at the time that came out I 
>> wasn't having any problems.
>>
>> /proc/asound/cards
>> 0 [SB0400         ]: Audigy2 - Audigy 2 Value [SB0400]
>>                     Audigy 2 Value [SB0400] (rev.0, 
>> serial:0x10011102) at 0xe800, irq 5
>>
>> /proc/asound/modules
>> 0 snd_emu10k
>
>
> I take that back, it may not be ESD after all.  I've been 
> experimenting with dmix and if I do a :
> aplay -D plug:dmix receive.wav
> Its very crackily and bad.  However:
> aplay receive.wav
> plays fine.
>
I confirmed that dmix is the culprit here.  Its set as default in 
.asoundrc in my user home directory.  The above test I did was as root, 
so the normal aplay without specifying dmix was what played fine.  
However running that same command as a user gives me similar crackily 
output. 

The reason this appears to have happened since the last update is dmix 
was set as the default.

alsa-lib-1.0.9rc2-1
-------------------
* Fri Apr 22 2005 Martin Stransky <stransky at redhat.com> 1.0.9rc2-1
- updated to 1.0.9rc2
- add ainit tool 
- dmix is now default pcm device

I'm going to check for existing bugs on this.  Sorry to spam the list with this stuff.  Can I ask what the default Fedora was using before this was however?  I tried removing my .asoundrc and of course it just got rewritten :)

Thanks!
Caerie