so, i've recently installed the latest debian sarge via the beta4 of the up-and-coming debian installer. my sound was working in the beginning, but has recently failed. when exactly it happened i am not sure, but it may have been after installing kde; i was running gnome, before that.

i first noticed it when trying to play some songs in xmms (mp3 and ogg). under gnome, xmms would freeze up when trying to play, while the output plugin it was using was set to OSS. so, i tried ALSA, esd, and arts, as well. no luck w/ any of them.

now, under kde and running arts, xmms is not freezing completely. when attempting to play through any plugin other than arts, i get the typical xmms message about checking to make sure your sound card is configured, making sure the correct output plugin is selected, and making sure another app is not blocking output.

but, when trying to play a track through arts, it acts as if it will play, but the track-time never moves forward. xmms will allow you to move the track cursor, but it will not move forward or play any sound at all.

amarok, attempting to use arts, does a similar feat. it, as well, acts as if to begin playing, but never moves forward or makes a peep.

rhythmbox attempts to use OSS, i believe, and throws this error, while artsd is running:
OSS device "/dev/dsp" is already in use by another program.
if i kill artsd, rhythmbox begins to play any given track. you can hear the first 1/2 second of the track, but after that the track goes silent, while the tracktime cursor continues to move, for a bit, until the whole application freezes.

xmms gives almost the same behaviour if i kill artsd: it plays less than a second of a track, then freezes completely.

i'm really not sure where to begin looking... it almost seems as if i have a few different problems, since the results i am getting are so varied. perhaps something keeps taking over the sound device, preventing arts or any other app to output? but, i have no good idea about what would be doing this.

any help is appreciated... thanks!