[CM] snd: cannot set hardware parameters for default

[Bill Schottstaedt]

> My wish list for snd would include something like dropping the alsa 
> driver and using something else, higher level of course. What? Hmmm, 
> pulseaudio is being used in f8 but I know nothing about it. One idea 
> that occurred to me a while ago is to try to see if libecasound can be

I just looked at pulseaudio and I can't see any gain from using it over
Jack or ESD, but its simple synchronous API looks like it could be
tied into Snd in about an hour (leaving aside the associated Autohell hackery
of course).  

I looked at ecasound a while ago -- it's some sort of string-based
command syntax that would not fit into Snd at all (sort of like
embedding execlp calls on sndplay, but less understandable),
and the docs seemed to be querulous -- somebody at ecasound
was having a bad day, perhaps, but I got the strong impression
that they didn't want anyone using it.

One more complication: although audio.c works in OSS Version 4
(thanks to Yair K. recently), OSS is obviously trying hard to be incompatible
with Alsa's OSS emulation, so that slope is slippery.  I hate Linux audio.