Well,
alsactl restore restores my sound card settings but it doesn't touch the USB device.
The sound cards is working as it should once again now. But the USB problem remains.
I'd given it up for a while (LOADS of work to get done!) but now I'm back struggling against Linux
hehehehe
Anyway, now my guess is that
alsactl restore 1 shouldn't be in the initializations scripts; why? Because whenever I manage to sneak the command into some script the reply I get from Linux is that the device doesn't exist or wasn't detected or something. In other words, Linux tells me there's no such device.
But when I run the same command from a terminal window in KDE, it works.
So, does anyone have any suggestions as how to solve my initial problem, possibly
without using
alsactl restore 1?