Please advise if possible, does not seem to be an answer elsewhere.

card: sb audigy

RH9 with kernel 2.24.xx installed from disk.
Installation flawless, sound worked in gnome-cd(cdplayer) and gaim.

Kernel upgraded to 2.6.1;
- new mod-init-tools included
- only USB and IPTABLE problems seen, former ignored, latter fixed.

downloaded and installed:
1. ALSA pkgs; driver, lib, utils, oss - appears to work OK
2. mplayer - appears OK, plays both audio and video
3. xine - appears OK, plays DVD videos with audio

ran :
alsaconfig - all OK it said for module emu10k1
sndconfig - error msg: "could not find sound modules - soundcore.o not in module path"
alsamixer - opened to graphic ui only once, rest of time was blank white screen
identified card as : SB Audigy with TriTech TR28602 chipset
amixer - appears OK, set Master and PCI volumes to 100%
record - appears OK, can record audio tracks and playback with xmms

problem:
both xmms and gnome-cd (cdplayer) play cd tracks OK in the old 2.4.20 kernel,
but neither will play the same tracks when in kernel 2.6.1.

aumix was used to unmute, the cable is on, the cdrom volume is up.

both work in 2.4.20,
both read the cd, show the title, play the music, but no sound is heard in 2.6.1

can anyone provide insight to this issue?
did i miss a volume control?, kernel compilation error?, bad installation of alsa????
any help would be greatly appreciated.

I just went to Gentoo 2.6.3 and tried to emerge emu10k1 only to be advised that it only works on 2.4.xx

Alsa support has been added directly into the 2.6 kernel tree. You can set it up when you configure your kernel. This is a big plus for people using Gentoo since it illiminates the download and compile of alsa.