OK, next gripe. It detects my hardware, loads modules, I've used alsamixer to make sure it's unmuted, I've used aRTS Control Tool to turn up the volume, I've checked settings under aumix, nothing. There's no longer a "volume control" menu item under "Sound & Video" or I would have tried that. Not even a decent error message. system-config-soundcard says it found a VIA VT8233/A 8235/8237 AC87 Audio Controller and used module snd_via82xx. Hitting the 'play test sound' button produces the following output in the terminal window: Simple mixer control 'PCM',0 Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Playback 0 - 31 Front Left: Playback 23 [74%] [on] Front Right: Playback 23 [74%] [on] Playing WAVE '/usr/share/system-config-soundcard/sound-sample.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 44100 Hz, Stereo Warning: rate is not accurate (requested = 44100Hz, got = 48000Hz) please, try the plug plugin (-Dplug:hw:0,0) No sound shows up. /dev/mixer shows up with rw permission for my userid. lsmod shows: snd 54053 9 snd_via82xx,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_mpu401_uart,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_device snd_ac97_codec 64401 1 snd_via82xx snd_mixer_oss 17217 1 snd_pcm_oss snd_mpu401_uart 8769 1 snd_via82xx snd_page_alloc 9673 2 snd_via82xx,snd_pcm snd_pcm 97993 2 snd_via82xx,snd_pcm_oss snd_pcm_oss 47609 0 snd_rawmidi 26725 1 snd_mpu401_uart snd_seq_device 8137 1 snd_rawmidi snd_timer 29765 1 snd_pcm snd_via82xx 27237 0 soundcore 9889 1 snd Motherboard is an ECS K7VTA3. Suggestions?