Hi. I'm having trouble getting sound to work on my Ubuntu 8.04 box. I tried both Amorak and Kaffeine just to see if it would play audio alone. Both give me a similar error:

xine was unable to initialize any audio drivers(or failed to initialize ).

I read around and tried a few things. My /etc/groups already includes my name, i.e. audio:x:29:tallah. I also installed some apci (?) package, but yielded no reults.

My sound worked fine under Windows so I don't feel there is anything wrong other than some missing driver, package, etc.

Any suggestions? I would be most grateful!

Install Xine-lib and xine-lib-extras for amarok to work. This may fix kaffeine and xine too. Applications -> Add/remove software

Do you get any sound at all from the computer? When you log in to Ubuntu, do you hear the login sound? Can you slide the volume control (the one in the corner of the screen) or is it completely disabled?

If there is no sound at all and the volume control doesn't work then you might need to install a driver for your audio card. Run the command 'lspci' and paste the results here so we can see your audio hardware.

I was also getting "xine was unable to initialize any audio drivers" with ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex).

Running pulseaudio -vv would give something like this:

I: module-hal-detect.c: Trying capability alsa
E: module-alsa-sink.c: Error opening PCM device hw:0: Device or resource busy
E: module.c: Failed to load module "module-alsa-sink" (argument: "device=hw:0
sink_name=alsa_output.pci_8086_27d8_alsa_playback_0"): initialization failed.

I have a

00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)

I believe the problem was that there was another application accessing the card. I was suspecting esound, but for me it turned out to be gnome-settings-daemon was somehow hung. Killing that and restarting pulseaudio (pulseaudio --daemonize) worked for me. I'd close any flash plugins, esound, or any gnome apps which might be accessing the sound card.

good luck...