When I try and play cd's with my laptop, i get no sound. I got sound when I play movies though.
I've done the alsaconf, alsamixer, and alsactl store but have not changed any permissions.
Sytem notifications make sound, when I test sound from the kde control center i get sound, but no sound when playing cd's.
This is on a gateway 7405gx laptop computer.

Anyone, feel free to correct any errors I make

Playing CD's requires that audio cable to be present between the drive and the soundcard. It's actually sending raw audio data, not regular data from the drive. There are work arounds (Digital Audio Extraction or DAE is the term) such as the plugin for xmms to do just that. I've heard that the 2.6 kernel also has a working DAE, but have yet to try it or see it.

Being able to play DVD's and hearing onboard sounds is completely seperate. DVD audio, IIRC is a form of mpeg audio, similar to mp3's. This data is actual data sent, not sound, and then decoded on the system, the drive just sends the data (1's and 0's). Same is to be said about onboard sound.

The best solution I can think of for you is to take the 30 seconds to RIP a cd to the HD (in mp3 format if space is limited) and play it, then just delete the files afterwards. It's a sad workaround, but should work nonetheless.

Cool

Thanks MasterC, I'll just rip the cd's to my laptop and keep them there(I own the cd's i'm going to rip).