Sound and Gnome

Gnome seems to be somewhat fux0red with regard to sound support. If you enable sound support in your Gnome Control Center, Gnome opens the sound devices exclusively. This means you cannot play any sound files until this is changed. However, you will be able to listen to all the strange noises Gnome can make.

To solve this either turn off sound support in your Gnome Control Center or to call third party programs as esddsp foo.