Multichannel audio not consistent between sound cards?

[Al Puzzuoli]

Hi all,

I am working with two machines running Edgy.  One is a 4 year old desktop 
with an antique sound blaster live,  probably dating back to the late 90s. 
the other is a 1 year old IBM ThinkPad T43 with SoundMax integrated audio. 
I have ESD enabled on both systems. I'm finding that when I attempt to play 
avi or mp3 files, on the pC with the sound blaster live, everything works 
fine; However on the laptop, I consistently lose DECtalk or Festival when 
the audio stream is playing.   The result is that  I can no longer utilize 
the screen reader, and lose access altogether unless I'm able to alt-f4 out 
of, or otherwise stop the media player.  i've had this experience with mp3 
as well as avi files, using both Rhythmbox and Totem Movie player.

I  guess I have several questions:
1.  Aside from playing with ESD, is there anything I can do to resolve the 
issue?
2.  Do all Alsa and/or OSS drivers need to meet some sort of minimum spec 
before their inclusion into distributions?  If this is a situation where the 
two drivers aren't created equal, then I wonder if for purposes of 
accessibility, a revision of this spec should be discussed?

Thanks,

--Al