Hi, 1. If not add your user to group audio. 2. open ~/.mplayer/config and add ao=alsa 3. Stop speech-dispatcher and try to run more than one mplayer instance to check the softmixing stuff. 4. Please post the output of lsof |grep snd HTH. halim Halim Sahin E-Mail: halim.sahin (at) t-online.de