Well I don't really know what to do, I run Xandros for a while a go... and it hade the same problem, even if I was using OSS, ESA or ALSA didn't work at all.
Anyway, if it's working fine with OSS, why go ALSA than?
Though I think it has with the sampling rate to do, whats the rate? 44.1K or higher as 48K. If it's 48K you get a bad sound if you are playing CD's and e.g Mp3's this because the most of them uses 44.1 as a sampling rate.
And then I could be on deep water to!