Hardware :: Applications Cannot Share Sound Channels?

I have a strange problem with my sound. The best way to summarize the error is that no two applications can mix their output to the default output channel. When I start my computer, the first application to use to the default sound channel seems to have a lock on the channel. No other applications can use that channel until I reboot again. I can close the first application and still nothing can access that other channel.

When a second application tries to access the default channel one of two things happen. Most application's sound gets routed to the headphone channel. In other cases I get error messages that the device is busy. I suspect that this is a related issue, whenever I use the command line command 'play' I get the following error:

Quote:

ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c1008snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave play formats: can't open output file `default': cannot open audio device

Now when I restart the drivers using "/etc/init.d/alsasound restart". All these problems are gone. So this is not a major issue, its just a little annoying. So a little information about my hardware/software:

Motherboard: Asus M3N78-VM (onboard sound)
Kernel Version: 2.6.27.23-0.1
Distro: openSuse 11.1
abridged output of /sbin/lspci:
===============================
00:07.0 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] High Definition Audio (rev a1)