ALSA is a low-level interface to the sound cards. If you are building your own sound server system or writing device drivers, then you will be interested in ALSA. It sits at the bottom of most of the current Linux systems, so to understand them, you may need to understand aspects of ALSA. If you are not interested, you can move on.
Resources
Here are some resources:
“Introduction to Sound Programming with ALSA” ( www.linuxjournal.com/article/6735?page=0,1 ) by Jeff Tranter
A close look at ALSA ( www.volkerschatz.com/noise/alsa.html ) by Volker Schatz
ALSA API ( www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/alsa-lib/ )
ALSA Programming ...
