Kevin,I haven't been able to get CD audio dispite lots of trying. I have a soundblaster 5.1 card using ALSA in FC3. My system is update as of 1 week ago.
What setting controls audio volume in alsa?
What application should I be using just to play CDs? How do I set-up audio output in that application?
I had exactly the same problem on my laptop, my audio CDs would not have any sound.
I did this Applications-->Preferences-->More Preferences--> Multimedia Systems selector.
I had the Default sink to ALSA and I changed it to ESD for gnome (Artsd, if u have kde).
Then I hit test, I could hear a tone. I also changed the Default source to ESD.
I was able to get audio cd sound fron kaffeine.
The reason has something to do with analog vs digital cable between the cdrom and the motherboard.
HTH, Shashank