In case it might be useful to someone lurking in these groups,
here's one solution to the problem of ordering of multiple sound
cards of different types.

Three of my machines have the same motherboard with built-in
sound.  One of them has a USB-to-MIDI interface to an electric
piano.  Sound output to the built-in sound device was not
working, because that machine was defaulting to the MIDI
interface as ALSA device 0 and the sound card as device 1.  Most
sound clients default to use device 0, some with no way to select
a different device.  The MIDI interface to the electric piano
wouldn't play WAV files, Flash videos, or any other PCM sound
output.  :-(

For the above case, the solution is to add something like the
following line to /etc/modprobe.conf: (indented here, not in the
file)

        options snd slots=snd-intel8x0

The stuff to the right of the '=' is a comma-separated list of
sound driver modules.  The line reserves slot 0 for the first
module in the list, slot 1 for the second in the list, and so
forth.

HTH

-- 
Robert Riches
spamtrap42@verizon.net
(Yes, that is one of my email addresses.)