Does RealPlayer use its own sound module? I'm running Fedora-4 with linux-2.6.12-1.1398_FC4 , and I'm quite baffled by the sound setup. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. I have tried changing settings in alsamixer, and this sometimes seems to work, and sometimes does not. But RealPlayer10 seems to work fine. Actually, after leaving RealPlayer10, sound seems to be restored, as heard when clicking "Play test sound" in System Settings=>Soundcard Detection . Incidentally, is that the best way to test sound? Would "cat <sound file> > /dev/dsp" be a more reliable test? Probably not relevant, but the sound system in my laptop is Yamaha YMF-754 [DS-1E Audio Controller] and the kernel uses the snd-ymfpci module . -- Timothy Murphy e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366 s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland