I had a bit of difficulty a while back installing Audacious, and after uninstalling and reinstalling several times, I began having problems with my sound. As of right now, the only system sound I have is the conga hit at login. After that, there is no system access to sound. Totem (or whatever my browser is using for embedded videos online) plays without sound. That neat little function is gone where I could sample mp3s just by passing my pointer over them briefly. My customized startup.wav is gone (it's there, obviously... it just won't play).
Let's go to System > Preferences > Sound, and currently the only settings that allow Audacious to work (the only thing that does work, really) are ESD for "Sound Events", "Music and Movies" and the first half of "Audio Conferencing". The second half, "Sound Capture", I have set to "SiS SI7012", which is my card. Changing this doesn't seem to affect anything else, so I'm not too terribly worried about it.
If I test any of these, "Sound Events" for example, this is the sort of error response I get:
On the "Sounds" tab I have checked "Enable software sound mixing (ESD)" as well as "Enable system sounds". My default sound card, as I mentioned, is SiS SI7012. If I try to test my "login" or "logout" wavs, I get nothing... no sound, no error.
Here's my sound card info:
My alsamixer settings have gone all over the place, but they appear not to be the issue here. I'm on Edgy, by the way. I'm sure I'm leaving something out, but here's the thread from Ubuntu Forums thus far, and no one appears to be able to help me any further. I would greatly appreciate any help. Thanks.

It's quite curious - the contrast between this question, which has evoked a deafening silence both here and in Ubuntu Forums, and other more mundane questions I've asked where I'm immediately deluged with responses.

I'm modifying my question a bit. Can anyone tell me if upgrading to Feisty, or reinstalling Edgy will fix this problem? I just want two things: I want my sound back, and I want not to lose my music files. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I should be able to do either of the above (update or reinstall) without losing any data. Thanks for any ideas or opinions.

P.S. - Is there any one person who is regarded within Linux or Ubuntu development as "The" sound person? If so, how do I contact them? Thanks.

I suppose nobody knows yet how to fix your problem.

I can't verify relevence, but I had the same exact situation and the same error messages after installing a commercial alsa mixer on Dapper. After a few days of tinkering, I got you might not have permission to use this device.And still no answers from any forums. (sigh)

When I finally resorted to reinstalling Dapper, it happily removed the original install without notification or verification. The only option I was given concerned the size of the partition.

I did learn later from a thread on LQ (not verified) there's a fix broken system option on the Live/Install CD, although (verified) it does not automatically appear when a previous install of the same distro is detected.

Perhaps one of these glitches has been fixed in Edgy or Fiesty?

If you can, I would backup the music files before attempting anything.

Hope you can find something useful in all this...

You have been very helpful. For starters, I'll look for that "Fix" on Live CD. More importantly, the echo I was hearing from talking in the cavernous empty room is gone now. I dare say backing up my music is probably out of the question. If it were a Gig or two I'd do it without thinking, but... no.

Just to be clear: the reinstall worked for you?

Thanks again.

Yes and no... It fixed the sound problem, and having not reinstalled that particular package, the problem has not reappeared. However, all previously installed software and data was gone. I had an all-new basic install on a squeaky-clean HDD. I was a bit dismayed that the installer didn't notify/verify that action first...

I'd look real hard for that fix option.

And you're welcome... I just hope something works.

Take a look at http://doc.gwos.org/index.php/Compre...olutions_Guide - I am currently trying to get my daughter's Ubuntu sound back - it used to work - and that is the only resource I have found so far.

It's a moot point, as I went and ran a fresh install of Feisty (Herd 4) and that problem is now gone. I probably could have run a fresh install of Edgy, Dapper, or Windows 3.1 and the result would have been the same. I'm somewhat saddened that I never figured it out, but what are you going to do? Feisty looks good, by the way. Firefox is way buggy, but I'm sure they'll figure that out and it will all be good. Thanks again to everyone.
Sincerely,
Ricardo

I encountered the same issue. After upgrading from Edgy to Feisty, system sounds had disappeared. I found a solution, which might work for somebody else as well. With Edgy, the sound device to use for playing sounds was not automatically correctly selected and I had forced it using command asoundconf. That setting was apparently no more applicable with Feisty and it simply stayed silent.

My solution was to reverse the card forcing by issuing command: asoundconf reset-default-card. After this, sounds worked immediately and the fix was permanent.

EDIT:

Apparently that wasn't much of a fix as couple of weeks later the sound from my S/PDIF output unexpectedly stopped working and stayed silent no matter how I tweaked the GUI settings.

I resolved that by configuring ALSA to put all sound to digital output and then set ALSA as the output device for all sounds in GNOME and in MythTV.

Instructions for forcing ALSA to use digital output are here. I simply created a file /etc/alsa.conf with single line content:
pcm.!default spdif

Also, I set MythTV directly to use S/PDIF by writing to sound output device: ALSA:iec958