Setting USB Audio as primary sound device is a mess

Using Kubuntu 10.10

Having a integrated sound card and plugging a USB Audio and setting it to the default in the Control Panel does not work in a general way, because the /dev/audio is still set to the onboard sound card and /dev/audio1 is still set to the usb device, instead of interchanging them.

This causes some external programs like WINE to use always the /dev/audio or the integrated sound card.

Furthermore, sometimes when rebooting the operating system or starting it with the USB audio unplugged it turns the onboard audio to the default, making my life impossible. In this cases, the system should give priority always to the most specific device, and preserve always that device in each moment that in plugged on.

For example this may be a level of preference:
USB audio > PCI/PCMCIA sound > onboard audio

Because if you have a PCI sound is that you pretend to use it instead of the onboard, and if you plug a USB audio when you already have one is because you want to use it instead, sound more logical, unless specified otherwise in the control panel.

To see, windows 7 in this cases always rightfully reads my mind, and all programs, microsoft ones or any other all use the same virtual sound device to output the sound.