Sound problems

[Fat Cat]

G'day all,

Running a DVD, I get reasonably good video at both 
"standard" and fullscreen (this improved after I explicitly 
activated DMA for the DVD device). However, I have two 
problems with sound:

1) The level is very low.  Speakers cranked right up and I 
    have to lean close to follow the soundtrack.

2) Sound is noticeably out-of-sync with video.

I used the latest RPM.
I'm running SuSE 7.2 on a 1.1G Athlon, with 32MB ATI Rage...
lots of system memory (512MB) if that makes a difference.
The audio is on the motherboard, and seems to have been 
properly detected and setup for other uses.  That is, I'm not 
USING it for anything else at the time -- I just tried it out to 
see if audio in general was working. It was.

I read the FAQ and tried explicitly loading ESD before 
running vlc, but now I get NO SOUND and messages like:

dvd warning: DTS audio not handled yet (0x89bd)
/dev/dsp: Device or resource busy
aout error: cant open esound socket (format 0x00001021 at 44100Hz) 

Any suggestions?

-- 
kevinmcl-at-magma-dot-see-eh?