[CentOS] Reset audio controller w/o rebooting?

Quoting Bart Schaefer <barton.schaefer at gmail.com>:

> As I mentioned on a thread about flash-plugin a few days ago, I'm
> having trouble with my sound device getting "stuck" and thereby
> causing problems for anything that accesses it, like video playback.
>
> Rebooting the machine "fixes" it for a while, but it's unpredictable
> for how long -- sometimes months go by without it recurring, sometimes
> it happens every couple of days.  Right now I'm in one of the latter
> phases.
>
> Any suggestions on how I could reset the controller without having to
> reboot?  (Or suggestions for where else I might ask this question?)
> Below is output from "lshw" for the audio controller, and "lsmod" for
> the sound modules that are loaded.  This is CentOS 4.7.

<snip>

I have similar problems in CentOS 5.  I disable and enable the flash plugin in
firefox, and it seems to be corrected.  My problem may be slightly different,
but this is how I 'fix' the problem.