I successfully upgraded from Edgy to Feisty but there are two upgrades waiting in update manager (they are also in Synaptic). Everytime I try to upgrade these two I get an error message. The two are alsa-base and alsa-utils. The error messages are:
I have changes mirrors and have cleared the cache a couple times each but still get this error message. Is this an error on my end or do you thing the repositories have a bad file?

Recording live music is a major use for this computer and I'm having playback problems I didn't in Edgy. I'm pretty sure I should update these packages before attempting to troubleshoot the sound problems. Any help is most welcome.

I've upgraded from Edgy to Feisty too, it seems I have the same package version(s) installed you listed, but I didn't get any problems. Last time I saw that "pre(/post)-installation script returned error..." message it was due to a broken script in the package (beta version or something, can't remember) and it was fixed later (though the file installed properly, it's removal was a pain). But like I said, I've installed/upgraded those packages successfully (so it seems to me) so I don't think the packages are broken.

Maybe you should clear the cache, update apt's lists, remove those packages (old versions) if they are in your system and then reinstall them from the net? When installing make sure apt downloads them from the internet reposity and doesn't use any local copy that might be corrupt.

Thanks for your reply. That seems to have got them install. I had to make a phony /etc/alsa/dev.d directory since I got a "not a directory error" when it tried to delete the files in this directory (I also created phony 0 bite files for the installer to delete).