ssh and alsa

Why does ALSA refuse to work with a normal user over SSH? I use mplayer and when I use it to play an audio files from my laptop I get errors unless I run it as root and thats only if I'm doing this over SSH. If I am sitting at the computer and I use mplayer I can as either user use it and work like it should. alsa in general seems to not work over SSH as a normal user but knows it exist because it tells me the followeing

cannot open mixer: No such file or directory

Any help on this issue would be appreciated

I just ssh'd into my laptop (Dell 1545n, Slackware 32--Current) and was able to start and manipulate alsamixer as user. Then, still as user, I started an *.mp3 with mplayer from the command line and it started playing through the laptop's speakers.

Is that the behavior you are trying for?

Are there any error messages or other output to the terminal that you could post here that might help us understand what's going on?

I want it to output through the linux box as if I was sitting at the computer typing the command in but it won't yes there are errors but like i said thats an error I get from alsamixer exactly as I typed it to you :P give me time to type out the error in here since it's only when I'm sshed in and I will have to type it manually -.-

[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4246: (_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: confmisc.c:392: (snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4246 (_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: confmisc.c:1251: (snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4246: (_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4725: (snd_config_expand) Evaluate eerror: No such file or directory
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: pcm.c:2217snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default
[AO SDL] Unable to open audio: No available audio device
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no sure if the rest applies to my issue or is just something else but here it is just in case
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DVB card number must be between 1 and 4
AO: [null] 44100Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)


well theres all the stuff that could have anything to do with it not working everything else I know should be there
thanks

remember everything with alsa works fine as a normal user if i run it on my desktop directory in a terminal but soon as I ssh in and do this over the network it doesn't work unless I run the program as root