Sound works on One program

[madcompnerd]

I have a AC97 ALC650 onboard audio, as many of you probably know cause I've been *****ing about it for months. I finally got sound. But I noticed that the sound will only work for one program at a time. If a game or mp3 program is running then all other sound apps fail to get sound.
Is this a normal linux thing? I'm using alsa drivers. Is this normal for ALSA drivers?

I did not use ALSA's method for running the drivers, they have you edit your modules.conf. It didn't work, so I removed all lines in there referring to audio and then just modprobed the modules I needed. Is this maybe why?
Some sound is better than no sound!

[bwkaz]

Which modules are you loading?

This kind of behavior is normal when using OSS, but not Alsa.

[madcompnerd]

I use OSS modules, and alsa modules. Here I'll show you all the ones I use:
snd-via82xx
snd-pcm-oss
snd-mixer-oss
snd-seq-oss
ac97

How would I use all alsa modules instead? I tried the alsa directions of loading in the modules.conf, but that doesn't get me any sound at all.