I don't know other auich's, but at least my auich doesn't work if its
rate is set other than 48kHz, and the error message below seems quite
familiar.
I'm using audio/sox to do rate conversion as follows.

yomogi:~$ cat bin/auichplay.sh
#!/bin/sh
audioctl -w play.encoding=slinear_le play.channels=2 play.rate=48000 \
play.precision=16 record.rate=48000 record.encoding=slinear \
record.precision=16
case "$1" in
-)
        sox -sw -t raw -r 44100 - -t raw -r 48000 -sw - resample -q >/dev/sound
        ;;
*)
        sox "$1" -t raw -r 48000 -sw - resample -q >/dev/sound
        ;;
esac

At Fri, 21 Sep 2001 04:30:22 +0200 (MEST),
Hubert Feyrer wrote:
> 
> 
> Is audio@auich known broken on -current/i386? trying to use it to play
> mp3s or wav files always gives me "Invalid argument". 
> 
> dmesg says:
> 
> auich0 at pci0 dev 31 function 5: i82801BA (ICH2) AC-97 Audio
> auich0: interrupting at irq 10
> auich0: Crystal CS4299 codec; headphone, 20 bit DAC, 18 bit ADC, Spatializer 3D
> audio0 at auich0: full duplex, mmap, independent

> rfhpc8321% madplay dr.\ monster.mp3
> MPEG Audio Decoder 0.13.0 (beta) - Copyright (C) 2000-2001 Robert Leslie
> audio: /dev/audio: Invalid argument


--
IWAMOTO Toshihiro