Where's the bug about this issue? It still isn't solved on version 0.9.2, and although "we" concluded that the problem was with alsa it self, I'd like to see what the Gentoo's developers are telling to the Alsa people, if they are saying anything AT ALL.
What issue are we talking about, again? As to your comment about filing a bug with the alsa people, then it should be up to you to do that. If you are seeing the bug and I am not, what use would there be in proxying bug-reporting for you?
There was a bug, started by someone else stating that the alsa-driver wasn't functioning well with the VIA chipsets, mainlly in my case via82xx. It should be up to US users, and not to YOU packages-maintainers-and-developers that should forward that info? My use, would be to have an active developers team. I remember once foser saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, that we should first post the bug here, and then the team in charge of the ebuild, should forward the problem, because of the patches they eventually apply.
If we could find a fix, then I'd be happy to send the ALSA developers a patch to fix the problem. But I am not going to file a bug report for you: I don't even own a VIA-based sound card. I've been following the discussions on the alsa mailning lists, and I can assure you that you are not alone who can't get a VIA chipset work well under ALSA, and I'm sure that the developers are reading those posts. I'm afraid that I can't do much more for you. Closing as CANTFIX.