apparently soundblaster drivers are a bit flaky (flakier than normal) in Vista, especially the x-Fi
Actually, the X-Fi drivers (not too sure about the other SoundBlaster ones) are now out of Beta and work just fine. These are the ones I use. Apart from the one second delay when using FreeAudio (which I'm sure other people also get on different cards) there are no issues. Any issues are down to drivers.
On Vista, simply use DirectSoound or package OpenAL with your app and use that, as Gfk has pointed out.
There's no need to learn any other commands if you're using FreeAudio, DirectSound or OpenAL, as you simply select which driver you want to use and carry on as normal.