hype, you've never really made it clear as to what packages of alsa (of what specific version) you had installed for what tests. I assume your test now always consists of: speaker-test -c2 -Ddefault -twav? I do know that for some 10.3 users, when using alsa-1.0.14, in addition to needing alsa, alsa-oss, alsa-plugins, they also needed alsa-firmware and alsa-tools (and possibly alsa-utils - my memory fails me here). When you tried with alsa-1.0.14, did you have all those apps installed?

Reference 1.0.15 RC ?? , what alsa apps did you install? Presumeably alsa, alsa-driver-kmp-default, alsa-oss, alsa-tools, alsa-utils, and alsa-plugins. .... Its not clear to me exactly what each does, but you can always remove the rpms if they don't do what you want.

Also note after installing a new alsa version, you MUST check the sound levels again. A reboot may also help (to load new drivers).