Strongly disagree on the ALSA comment. PulseAudio is the primary cause for most latency in Linux audio. I've written sound playback and recording code in ALSA and achieved low latency without difficulty. I wouldn't wish PulseAudio on my worst enemy.
I'm going to have to agree with this. I was the one complaining about ALSA to begin with, but PulseAudio is just another layer of indirection around ALSA. In other words, ALSA sucks, but it's more widespread than OSS, and it at least gives you some control.
