Upgraded to linux 2.6 on debian! Audio works flawlessly now!
As part of my inconsequential blabber of my shift to Debian, heres more. :-D
As most of you know Debian still has a default install of a linux-2.4 kernel. So I finally upgraded to linux-2.6. One of the positive outcomes out of that was that all parts of my "Audio System" are working now. Previously on 2.4, only music players and 'aumix' worked. No other mixer (including the gnome-volume-control-applet) worked. It all seemed shitty.
But as soon as I upgraded to 2.6, just as I suspected, everything came back to normal. I guess it was just one of those things where Debian is ALSA based, where as linux 2.4 still had OSS. Now everything is ALSA. Everything works (sound wise....atleast till what I've checked).
Two more things came to my notice though. My Sound Recorder (in gnome) doesn't work. Have to investigate that. Also the default sounds for the Gnome Desktop (part of the gnome-audio package) suck. HARD! I wonder if anyone uses them either. It did however made me nerdy-nostalgic about the time when cool themes (with various sounds) was all the rage for me.
*SHRUG*