I installed ALSA on a stock debian kernel, version 2.6.3, on debian sarge. I have installed the debian ALSA packages and run the cfg and stuff. I have also added myself to the audio group. The problem is that sound works on tuxracer, but not with something like saytime. Saytime just announces the time. I get the following error message:

conrad@conradpc:~$ saytime
sox: Can't open output file '/dev/audio': No such device or address
child process returned a non-zero status 2

It worked once by some miracle but after a reboot it stopped working. My /proc/asound/cards only reads that there are no soundcards. WHenever I sop ALSA I also get the following error message

Storing ALSA mixer settings ... failed
Shutting down ALSA (version 1.0.2c): done.

Thanks a lot