sound

[tony.chamberlain at lemko.com]

I am using CentOS 4.5.  I bought a USB speaker.  Sound works fine.
My problem though is that whatever player I am using "hijacks" the sound.
That is, if I go to youtube or accuradio or whatever (play via mozilla),
then when that is finished, if I try to use xine or realplayer everything
works fine EXCEPT the sound ;-)  I have to exit and pkill firefox.  
Similarly if I use xine or realplay and later want to hear via firefox 
there is no sound.  Doing a pkill on xine or realplay is not enough.
I HAVE TO REBOOT.

There should be someway to release the sound device (maybe different in
each case) so something else can use it?