I'm a complete n00b to debian but its becoming to be my favorite distribution because of the insane amount of customization. I'm having a problem with alsa using kernel 2.6.8-k7. I won't even get sound, so i run alsaconf as root in a GNOME terminal, it detects my sound card and adjusts mixing levels accordingly, then i run alsamixer to check the levels, then alsactl store, all this being done as root. My sound will be fine as beep-media-player will play my mp3's. It works until i reboot, once i reboot i have to repeat the process, which is very frustrating. Like i said im a learning n00b so i don't know what log files to post here if i even need to, but anyone that can help me i would like to thank in advance!

What GUI are you using? I use KDE and I find that I need to set the audio levels in kmix as well. I don't really understand the relationship between alsa and arts, but I just do what I need to for sound.

don't run alsaconfig!
be sure you Synapticed alsa packges for best results all of them. (you can remove unnecessary afterwards)
su
<pw>
#alsamixer
Configure bars as you want them (enable or disable with "m" key
Done? then ESC
#alsactl store
#reboot

i'm running GNOME... and just setting the mixer levels are useless because my sound card won't even work... is onboard VIA82cxx (ac '97 audio)... i've never had any problems with sound before using other distro's so i'm kind of stumped... but once i run alsaconf as root the sound works as normal. Using beep-media-player (or xmms... whatever) with the alsa 0.9.7 plugin it will display an error saying it can't open the audio device, but once alsaconf is run it works normally. any more help would be great!

and i used apt-get to retireve and install all obvious alsa packages... the 2.6 kernel must have alsa pre-compiled because there was no choice for alsa-modules for linux 2.6, just 2.4

I also use gnome and funny story that I 've been using Linux since 2001. Will you believe me if i tell you that I always used Gnome and never alsaconf. Always alsamixer