Comment 4 for bug 44101

 I am also experiencing the same problem with gnome-sound-properties (not retaining) my default soundcard preference.

The same existed in breezy which never got resolved by a bugfix.
I had to set snd-emu10k1 to index=0 in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base to get it to be default (card 0) , and snd-cmipci to index=1 for second soundcard.
This dosn't seem to work anymore in Dapper though.
There should be a dependable way to force these preferences -
like setting soundcard-name=index=0 in ./asoundrc or /etc/asound.conf
This is a serious issue to me not a trivial one.
I have to turn off the cmipci sound on the soyo MB in bios to fix it now , and I Need that second sound card for my audio recording work.