Hey everybody. I'm a guy who just installed debian 3.1 with a 2.6 kernel. I'm having sound problems. I installed the xmms package and alsa-base and alsa-utils. I have a test file that I'm using. When kde starts there's a small screen that says

error while initializing the sound driver
device /dev/dsp can't be opened (no such device)

I click the ok button and start up xmms. I'm in the audio group. I try to start alsamixer in a terminal, thinking I have to turn off mute. I get this message

alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: no such device

I don't know what this stuff means. Any help would be greatly apreciated!!

I bumped into this page which may give you a good place to start looking: http://http://www.debianhelp.co.uk/sound.htm. At least this page should give you the basic info on Debian and sound configurations.

I believe KDE works better with aRts rather than jackd from something else I had read previously.

I don't know what jackd or aRts is, but you were right on the money with that page. Thanks sooo much. I had to mess with things for a while, and at one point I didn't know what I was doing, but it worked out in the end (I think). Thanks.