Hi JMarin, I'm not aware of any specific problems and as long as ALSA is installed properly including drivers, firmware, tools and utils you shouldn't have too much trouble. 

One area where Ubuntu and studio users get frustrated with is finding that their integrated sound card is often preferred instead of their RME device.  You can define the index for each card in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base    at the end after all the 'bad' cards are given negative numbers to make sure they don't get loaded first, you can add the indices for your soundcards maybe an Intel or soundblaster, and an index for the RME card.  This way when you define the soundblaster as the default audio device, or your RME it will stay that way and Jack should also.

I am not sure what is going on with pulseaudio these days.  As I recall and someone else might explain better it is a way to allow multiple clients to the sound system perhaps all having different sample rates and not causing problems.  For example system sounds happening along with your movie and not causing any streaming hiccups or loss of audio...I guess I don't use it yet but I think the newer ubuntus use it more now.

I have been focusing on 64studio 3.0 beta 3 which now has an ubuntu base, but a custom music RT kernel that works very well and supports RME devices right off the DVD.

Hope this helps!

jonathan adams leonard

http://www.64studio.com

I think it's something in Pulse Audio that causes problems with Alsa in the new versions of Ubuntu. When I configure the index for each card in 8.04 and older the 9632 works fine. I guess it might be time for me to try 64 Studio or figure out how I can possible remove Pulse Audio all together with the newer distributions.