The ALSA emerge line in kernel guide is a bit lonely! ;-) I had problems when following the guide because the alsa driver wouldn't compile. Searching bugzilla shows a couple of reported bugs to this effect because people had forget to set ALSA_CARDS="" in /etc/make.conf A link to the ALSA guide might be pertinent or a couple of sentences on configuring make.conf. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3.
Using 2.6, you don't need to emerge alsa-drivers anymore. What emerge line are you referring to?
I need more info