I have a problem on my Suse 9.1. The audio device is being blocked by one of the applications and I think its the program Kaffein because its the only one that can play any audio or video. But I cant hear any sound from my browser or anything else...
Anyone have any ideas how I can unblock my audio device?

Browsers don't usually make a lot of noise

Please provide a lot more background info - what equipment (make, model, etc) are you using, and what is the output of lsmod? Does sound work for any other apps, like playing CD's? Has sound ever worked in the past?

If this is a new installation and sound has never worked, then it's possible that either you need to load the module your sound card needs, or possibly you just need to go through a couple of initial configuration exercises (such as alsaconf and alsamixer). If sound used to work but now doesn't, it could be a simple matter like the speaker cable not being in the right jack in the soundcard, or that the sound volumes are all turned down to zero.

The more info you can provide, the better the chances that someone will be able to offer useful advice. Good luck with it ChemicalBurn -- J.W.

No you see, here's my confusion. The only media program that works is Kaffein. All other media programs give an error that the sound card is being occupied by a different program, or its blocked. So if I try to view flash films or anything with audio on the internet, and not through Kaffeine, I cant hear any sound.
the outpur of lsmod is :
Module Size Used by Not tainted
snd-pcm-oss 45472 0 (autoclean)
snd-mixer-oss 13400 1 (autoclean) [snd-pcm-oss]
ide-cd 29664 0 (autoclean)
cdrom 26752 0 (autoclean) [ide-cd]
snd-seq 36656 1 (autoclean)
videodev 5696 0 (autoclean)
agpgart 42072 4 (autoclean)
isa-pnp 30696 0 (unused)
usbserial 19580 0 (autoclean) (unused)
parport_pc 26248 1 (autoclean)
lp 6208 0 (autoclean)
parport 22888 1 (autoclean) [parport_pc lp]
ipv6 210080 -1 (autoclean)
key 63256 0 (autoclean) [ipv6]
snd-intel8x0 19588 7
snd-pcm 65092 2 [snd-pcm-oss snd-intel8x0]
snd-timer 15040 0 [snd-seq snd-pcm]
snd-ac97-codec 39608 0 [snd-intel8x0]
snd-page-alloc 6004 0 [snd-intel8x0 snd-pcm]
snd-mpu401-uart 3584 0 [snd-intel8x0]
thermal 6148 0 (unused)
snd-rawmidi 14208 0 [snd-mpu401-uart]
processor 8248 0 [thermal]
snd-seq-device 4048 0 [snd-seq snd-rawmidi]
snd 35172 4 [snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-seq snd-intel8x0 snd-pcm snd-timer snd-ac97-codec snd-mpu401-uart snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device]
fan 1472 0 (unused)
button 2380 0 (unused)
battery 5600 0 (unused)
soundcore 3588 0 [snd]
ac 1664 0 (unused)
keybdev 1996 0 (unused)
mousedev 4084 0 (unused)
joydev 5120 0 (unused)
evdev 3584 0 (unused)
input 3360 0 [keybdev mousedev joydev evdev]
usb-uhci 22224 0 (unused)
usbcore 58636 1 [usbserial usb-uhci]
raw1394 16592 0 (unused)
ieee1394 183364 0 [raw1394]
af_packet 12200 1 (autoclean)
e100 44584 1
nls_cp437 4348 1 (autoclean)
vfat 9900 1 (autoclean)
fat 30712 0 (autoclean) [vfat]
nls_iso8859-1 2812 3 (autoclean)
ntfs 74924 2 (autoclean)
reiserfs 199636 1

Hope this helps.

And what distro are you running, what's the make and model of your soundcard, and can you post the output of "lspci"?

Having the results of lsmod can be a useful clue, but as I tried to indicate earlier, the more info you provide, the better the chances of someone being able to offer useful advice. -- J.W.

If you think Kaffeine is interfering with things, you can just kill the process: "ps ax" to show the processes, then "kill <pid>"