It was working and working great for months now. I use an onboard audio device that was detected and installed automatically on install. I had to run amixer set 'IEC958' on and make the proper changes in the asound file to enable the iec958 switch, and then everything worked and kept working until midday yesterday. I watched Monty Python and the Life of Brian for Easter and it played just fine. As I have seen the film many times, I fell asleep during it. When I woke up, no sound would work in any application. In my other OSes installed, audio works fine, so I know it is not external to the computer (wiring, receiver, etc). Inside of YaST, it shows the same driver installed as always, but when I click to play test sound nothing plays. Checked mixer settings to ensure IEC958 switch was still on and output streams were not muted. When in Totem, all the audio controls are greyed out, inside Amarok or Kaffeine it looks like it's working but nothing can be heard. Pidgin, Opera, and Wine applications all tested, and nothing will play a sound. I'm not sure what could have spontaneously gone wrong, and as it was all there to begin with, I'm have few clues on how to troubleshoot it.

-Josh
Maybe it was that I angered god as an atheist celebrating easter in a somewhat sacrilegious manner :P

Run alsaconf as root.

The bad news is that if it happened once, it will happen occasionally.

Well, that didn't work, but I can notice some more info. When I have the volume of my receiver turned all the way up, I do hear a strange feedback noise. It goes away in the last few steps on the shutdown and comes back about halfway through the startup, before it loadds x. After reconfiguring the driver in YaST, when I go into the xine parameters in kaffeine and select specifically alsa, it tells me that the PCM mixer is in use. I think that error might have just been transient, since I've yet to see it since. I'm about to give up and reinstall, but since it was working flawlessly for months now, I am urged to figure it out as opposed to going through the extensive process of a reinstall.

-Josh