Hi,
problem 1: do a “sysctl ‑a | grep latency”. If something shows up in the sound system related area increase the value and try again (I have to use 64 for my snd_es137x). If this doesn’t help, ask on multimedia@FreeBSD.org.
problem 2: Search the multimedia@ mailinglist. Someone @FreeBSD.org wrote a plugin which uses OSS instead of ALSA (the flash developers provided some hooks for just this reason).
cups/cuss: CUPS is a userland solution for hardware which is connected externally via a connection which allows this. In the soundsystem only an USB audio driver would be possible in userland, but you would need special applications using this userland solution. All real soundcards (“real” as in connected to the PCI bus) need some stuff in the kernel. So you have to write kernel stuff in any case. So you can’t use CUPS as a pattern here.
Bye,
Alexander.