aRts might not be woring properly....
 

for some reason when in Kde 3.2 i can't select aRts under "sound system" in "sound & multimedia"

also when more than one prog tries to access the sound card device who has control over it gets to have sound...

2 reasons for this.
Reason number 1.
The item you find under sound system in sound and multimedia. IS NAMED ARTS. Anything you configure there is configuring arts itself.

Reason number 2.
Linux does not support hardware mixing. If the program using sound doesnt give up control, no other program can use it. Why should you know this? Is posted all over the internet in a million different complanits about that fact and nobody has fixed it yet.